Customer Reviews

THE GREATEST [Vinyl]

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

... So the other reviews here, necessarily, have me baffled.

I just found out about Cat Power via this CD. So my impression as a first-timer, completely ignorant of her previous works:

Wonderful.

Of course, I grew up in the South, hearing Janis Joplin, Dylan, Van Morrison, and other "blues/gospel-inflected" music (even if these artists are mostly "before my time," and not necessarily from my area).

So I, personally, was thrilled to find this album. And I can honestly say -- in a "scene" where I am constantly bombared with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, etc. -- Cat Power is the only musician that has had me personally excited in a few years.

So take it for what it's worth. I guess my next step will be to check out Chan's other albums.

But those other albums don't matter to me, at the moment.

I give this a very happy and enthusiastic 5 Stars.

Cat Power's output will never be accused of being very emotive or lyrically overwrought, yet her latest album goes beyond the austere boundaries of prior releases. This is not to say that Marshall has gone over the edge in any way, yet in The Greatest her voice seems to reach for new tender corners and there's a certain compassion for her songs' characters in this album which- at least to me-have never been this apparent in the past.

This is the case with the title song and opener, a moving piece about a boxer, which already showcases some key musical choices that give The Greatest its particular feel. Whether it's the subtle guitar work, the way the strings and piano unfold its melody, or the drums-which I don't recall being present as often or featured as they are throughout these tracks-ease you into a different kind of Cat Power album.

A similar feel to the opener returns in "Living In Bars," "Where Is My Love" and "Willie," yet not all songs comply to this formula, by the way, songs like Living Proof," "Could We," "After It All" or "Islands" are-in their own ways and by Cat Power' standards-more accessible, more willing to reach out than past material.

Still, this is a Cat Power album, "The Moon"-one of my favorite songs-as well as "Empty Shell" or "Hate," each in its own way, proved this and may remind you of prior albums.

So, enjoy and be moved by a special singer and interesting songwriter who's still willing to explore the music outside her usual world, and had the shy observer she's always been, step out into new moods.

I met Chan Marshall on the internet about three years ago. We were both listed in the Yahoo Membership Directory and, of course, in disguise. I remember her listing saying that she was concerned about the melting of the polar ice caps and running low on toilet paper. Amused, I dropped her a note telling her that the polar caps would probably hold for a while, but to keep a close eye on the toilet paper. First thing you know, we were chatting and developed an internet friendship. Nice lady. Pleasant. Friendly. Funny. Interesting. We ultimately revealed our true identities to one another. I looked up Cat Power on Amazon.com, bought the "You are Free" disc and liked it from the first listen. Later, I purchased "The Covers Record" CD and liked it too. At about that time, Cat Power came through San Diego. A couple friends and I went downtown for a listen. When we got to the venue, there was a good-sized crowd milling around and looking somewhat disgruntled. It seems the concert was sold out. What a disappointment! I then took out a very small piece of paper, wrote a note to Chan explaining our difficulties and asking if there was anything she could do. I gave it to a venue worker and he took it in to her. About five minutes later, all three of us were admitted without tickets and at no cost. What a nice thing for her to do! We enjoyed the concert and I thought "Good Woman" was the best song of the evening. My only regret was in not getting to meet Chan in person.

I bought "The Greatest" CD the week it came out. I listened to it once and put it away. Somehow, I have to be in the right mood to listen to Cat Power Music, and the time wasn't right.I was too hard pressed with too many things. Now, six months later I'm listening again. It's a splendid and elegant CD. Chan's voice is in beautiful form and she`s backed by a terrific band. Strings, guitar, slide guitar, sax, piano, organ, bass drums and voices lightly and skillfully fill in the backdrop behind Chan's vocals, but they never intrude. The arrangements are exquisite. All of the songs are excellent (I seem to have an extra bonus track) and the quality and style is much more uniform than on the "You are Free" CD. The music is slower, softer, generally more melodic and with a slightly countryish or folkish slant. The arrangements and production are elegant and the songs are of such uniform and high quality that I'm hard-pressed to come up with favorites. OK, I'll try. I'd say "Empty Shell," "Willie," "Islands," and "Love & Communication" might be the best, but only by a tiny margin. IWith a slightly different mood, I might have another list.

I enjoy listening to Cat Power music, but I have difficulty interpreting the songs. On this particular CD, all the lyrics are printed on the inside of the cover, so I can follow along line by line, but I still have trouble interpreting the songs. It seems strange that I'd enjoy the music so much and even get a bit teary eyed in places, even though I don't understand the song. Evidently, Chan is very skilled in conveying deep emotions through her voice alone. Then along comes a song like "Hate." Chan, Hon, we all love you; don't hate yourself and want to die.

Gary Peterson

The Greatest by Cat Power is a great place to get introduced to this original songwriter. Slowed down, acoustic, dreamily textured, these songs reflect the maturity of a songwriter at the top of her powers. Those who warm up to these slower acoustic songs will probably want to check out kindred spirits in the bands Beaumont, The Big Phony, The Clientele, Club 8, The Concretes, Hope Sandoval, Le Mans, The Monglfier Brothers, Ronderlin, and Simpatico.

It took me a while to get used to the sound and (emotional) tone of this album, but once I was over that hump - I just cant' stop listening to this record. And subsequently can't stop being thrilled with it.

I still don't know what is the secret of this albums appeal; originally I was drawn by the sheer idea of Al Green's/Willie Mitchell's backing guys recording something new, but the sound has nothing to do with any kind of recycled soul. Instead, it has a lot of soul, but is just not of the reheated kind; it is soul music in a sense that it is a pure emotion, and this is how I imagine what soul - a music genre - is.

But this album transcends any genre. my closest definition would be to imagine if Velvet Undergrounds went down deep South in an attempt to record their "Exile on Main St." album, and Nico - clean and sober, albeit in a trenchant melancholy mood - sings all the songs - then that would be this record!

Sometimes the things we don't get right away, we get to cherish the most: this album is pure beauty despite its hard to penetrate surface. Give it a chance, it will grow on you.

It looks like Neko Case may have to make some room in the "alt-country chanteuse" category. Though I'm not familiar with Cat Power's body of work, if this is a departure from her usual style, I would have to conclude it's for the better. This is an excellent collection of songs that scores points for both melody and mood. It gets off to a strong start with the title track, "Living Proof" and "Lived in Bars" - an impressive trifecta of songs. But there's hardly a weak moment throughout the whole recording - "Willie" and "Love and Communication" are among other highlights. Vocally, she sounds like a sleepier version of Shelby Lynne or Dusty Springfield, or Beth Orton after a year or two in Nashville. The folky, country-blues feel of these arrangements complement her sultry voice perfectly - the gently rocking piano, the sax and horn backups, the occasional steel guitar, and the subtle background vocals. The recording has that "alt-country reverb" production that seems so popular these days, yet here it's more subtle than, say, My Morning Jacket. And I half-expected Neil Young to drop by at some point, as it has very much the same ambience of an album like his "Harvest Moon". In short, it's one of the best releases so far of this still-young year.

Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) is by now well known for her inconsistent live performances. See her on Friday and she'll croon for hours. See her on Saturday and she'll hunch over the piano with a bottle of Jack, muttering diatribes under her breath before running offstage in tears. Taken with her tortured lyricism and sprawling full-lengths, these actions painted Cat Power as simultaneously brazen and insecure, and as such, she helped redefine the notion of the independent musician by living out the discomfort that came from composing exactly what she felt she needed to compose.

So what would Cat Power think upon hearing that she'd receive a hefty recording budget and play with Al Green's hit-makers at the same studio as Dave Matthews and R.E.M.? If you said, "She would run screaming into the night," you're wrong. Abandoning the oblique, quietly angsty indie rock of You Are Free, Cat Power cuts her teeth on Southern soul for her seventh LP, The Greatest. She recorded the album in Memphis at the world-famous Ardent Studios with veteran soul musicians Mabon Hodges, Leroy Hodges and Steve Potts, for a detour into a singer-songwriter's take on Memphis blues-lite.

This is indeed an impressive setup, but The Greatest still falls a bit short. Yes, Potts and the Hodges brothers are supposed to ballast Marshall, not upstage her, but they're not given nearly enough to do--a twang here, a lazy drum fill there, and all performed with a disappointing lack of élan. Fault the studio, too, for rendering the album's second half somewhat limp and same-sounding, and for some of the album's biggest blunders: in roughly half the songs, for example, Marshall's voice appears as a ghosted backing vocal, like a gospel singer from beyond the grave. It's sillier than it sounds.

Cat Power hardly lets these flaws derail the entire album, however, since the strength of her records has always been in the arrangements, vocals and lyrics--not the studio techniques or the backing band. Marshall's voice has never sounded better than it does here; coarsened by whiskey and time, her vocals take on a torchy, sultry tone that fits the music like a glove.

The album's first half also features some of Cat Power's loveliest songs to date. If the gently swinging ditty "Could We" is perfect for playing over the barroom juke as young couples sway on the dance floor, "Lived in Bars" is the moonlit slow-dance after the barroom has closed down for the night. The title track is the album's crown jewel, beginning as an archetypal Cat Power piano arrangement and adding guitars, strings, and a slowly loping drumbeat like ripples in a pond. Far from being a song of fist-pumping glory, "The Greatest" is actually a saddening white flag; Marshall begins, "Once I wanted to be the greatest / No wind or waterfall could stop me." Anyone who knows Cat Power can easily conjecture what becomes of our narrator from here.

Yet what's missing from The Greatest are those gripping moments found on You Are Free and earlier, more overtly tense albums like Myra Lee. There's more drama in a song like "Names" (from You Are Free) than in anything The Greatest has to offer, and it's not because Marshall holds back lyrically; she doesn't, if bald-faced confessions like "I hate myself and I want to die" are any indication. It's because she allowed the Memphis soul theme drive the work to its final destination, and somewhere along the way it became more important to sound pretty than to create something meaningful. The Greatest is Cat Power's most listenable record thus far, but for an artist this willfully difficult, is that really a success?

Matador records keeps pointing out to anyone who cares that The Greatest isn't supposed to be a greatest hits album. Oh yeah? Well with songs this good, it might as well be. This album is filled with quite a fine selection of Chan Marshall's R&B, soul, and country-flavored numbers. One of the previous reviewers suggested this is an acoustic album. That is incorrect. The songs are performed by a full studio band (electric guitars and bass, Hammond organ, drums, horns etc). The songs are well written, well arranged, well produced, and performed by the kind of studio pros that most any artist playing Stax-era R&B would be proud to have. Best of all, Marshall's voice has never sounded better.

This album is overflowing with winners: "Living Proof", "Willie", "Lived in Bars", "Where is my Love", "Love & Communication", "Could We", "The Moon". Even the B-list songs are still pretty good. I'm even willing to forgive an old styled Cat Power song like "Hate", with Marshall playing one of her signature cloddish guitar parts. I mean, the rest of the album is so good; who cares if she wants to goof around on her crappy Silvertone for a couple minutes while the tape rolls and the band takes a break?

My only real complaint is that some songs are too short. When you get a great rhythm and horn section going on a song like "Could We" you don't pack up shop after 2:21 minutes. Let the horn players take a solo. Let the Telecaster guy or the Hammond B3 guy take a wack at it for a few bars. Build up to a crescendo and then drop back down. For heaven's sake, go back and listen to your Booker T and the MGs albums a couple more times--you'll see what I mean.

Another small quibble is too many songs are built around a single unchanging progression. A cool song like "The Moon", with its rotating Leslie speaker vibe, is robbed of some drama because there are no breaks or changes. Marshall's career-long love of repetative song structures is too reductive, particularly when she's got a really great band like this one.

I've spent the last few months working my way through the entire Cat Power catalog only to discover she really has nothing else like this album. The Covers Record has hints of this album--with pared down covers of folk and country blues songs. Her remaining albums are a different world entirely. Some are better than others, but virtually everything that ever bothered me about previous Cat Power albums is fixed in The Greatest (above all, Marshall has focused on writing and singing while allowing better musicians to handle the accompaniments).

As much as I like the album, I recognize The Greatest is not for everyone. Fans who prefer the haunted pathos, disorder, and rawness of the Moon Pix era (as well as the sense of an album long suicide note) will miss the old Cat Power sound. There's nothing on this album that sounds like "Metal Heart", "Nude as the News", "Rockets", or "He War". Well, actually there's "Hate". But a single old-style song out of an entire album may not be very satisfactory.

On the other hand, if you appreciate vintage 60's and 70's era soulful R&B, you've come to the right place. Marshall has a top notch band and a voice to match. If you could mix Bobby Gentry with maybe a touch of folk singer Sandy Denny and a hint of Janice Joplin, you'd have something that sounded pretty good indeed. To my ears, that exactly what you have with Marshall's singing on The Greatest.

Cat Power's The Greatest is...the greatest. I'm rating it a "10" because I don't think I can recall ever being so immediately and viscerally seduced by an album. I couldn't begin to describe its sound. If you put a gun to my head--please don't!--I guess I'd call it alternative soul. Whatever the hell it is, it's hypnotic and brilliant. I'm completely blown away. Everyone should own this album. Go buy it. Now. I'll wait. *crosses arms*


Standout single...if there has to be one...as the whole album is bloody brilliant..."Love and Communication." Something about it really soothes my soul.

I've enjoyed Cat's last few CD's, but to be honest sometimes the dissonant, minimalist nature of her previous work was losing its appeal for me. I often wondered what she would sound like with a bit more than lo-fi music to support her husky velvet voice. This is that album. The studio musicians Chan works with here add a whole new dimension, more texture, more layers, more variety to her songs. Check it out.