Cat Power - The Greatest

In the three years since Chan Marshall, a musician who spends her days playing hypnotic and beautiful music under the name Cat Power, released her last album You Are Free, she has emerged from the shadows less tentatively than one might expect. Chan Marshall has been prone to being reduced to tears onstage. There was her appearance on an episode of Austin City Limits doing a duet of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” with The Flaming Lips and her slinky and sexy guest appearance on the last Handsome Boy Modeling School album, White People.

As Marshall has decided to come out from behind her mane of auburn hair and show off these different sides of herself, the same playfulness and sensuality has washed over into her musical output as well. On The Greatest, the 7th Cat Power album in a span of 11 years, Marshall decided to record in Memphis with some seasoned studio players to give the entire proceedings the feel of a late ’70s Al Green record. In fact, one of the key artists on this record is guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges who has co-writing credits on Green’s “Take Me To The River” amongst others.

It is the additions (the sax and trumpet stabs, the gentle strings and dreamy background vocals) to Marshall’s sound that give the record a warmth that was often lacking in her more abstract and poetic work. The second track, “Living Proof”, starts with a chugging drum beat (courtesy of fellow Memphis vet Steve Potts) which is quickly topped off with a chiming guitar chord, organ and a bass plugging away on the one. It would be easy to mistake this for a Bill Withers track if not for the lilting and unmistakable vocals of Marshall. Still, she rises to the occasion, wrapping her vocal line around the music like a mink stole or a silk ribbon.

Other songs, if stripped down, could be outtakes from previous records, but Marshall allows little touches that give them breathing room. There’s the fiddle that keeps the song “Empty Shell” buoyant, the background vocals on “The Moon” that sound as if they’ve been run through a processed Farfisa, and the honky tonk piano and whistling that make their way into “After It All”.

Lyrically, Marshall takes a more direct approach than we’ve grown to expect from her earlier work. On the title track, she puts herself in the guise of a boxer looking back on his hopes and dreams of glory. In the swinging “Could We”, she speaks directly to a prospective beau about taking walks, warming hands and kissing “but not too fast”. It’s hard to tell whether these lyrics are a natural offshoot of the music that comes along with them (the more difficult tracks to decipher also feature what we could call a more typical Cat Power sound), but they are welcome additions to her already strong catalog of songs.

There is a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that this record could do wonders for Marshall’s career. True, she has already reached the level of success that allows her to go on the road and play for a screening of “The Passion of Joan of Arc” to sold out audiences, but this record has that feeling of a breakout. That might be an easy way of saying that it is more accessible than her previous albums, but the chemical memory that this CD leaves you with after a mere 42 minutes is one that sounds, from the first piano chord to the last buzz of guitar, like it could intoxicate the world.

Posted on February 15, 2006 12:00 AM