'The Greatest'
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Cat Power-
The Greatest
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Google is spattered with
all kinds of pictures of
bookish, grinning girls,
sunglasses wearing
rockstarrettes and
make-up covered Aguilera
wannabies, all with one
common trait: A subtitle
reading ‘Chan Marshall’.
But for all the
chameleon power (sorry!)
the Cat Power singer
might wield image-wise,
the voice is always a
familiar one. Sorrowful
and swaying, sultry and
dulcet, and always
singing blissfully about
some unending sadness
even the indie pop
princess herself
probably struggles to
understand. To follow
03’s brilliant ‘You Are
Free’ (a record this
reviewer completely
missed out on), Chan
relocated to Memphis and
hooked up with some
A-grade soul and folk
luminaries whose names
you may never have heard
but whose songs you most
definitely have (‘Take
Me To The River?’
surely?). The result is
an album that sees Cat
Power as more of a
greying, domestic tabby
than the ever-cornered,
spitting feline she has
been in the past. Opener
and title track ‘The
Greatest’ is a ghostly
waltz with a beautifully
gentle string
accompaniment, ‘Living
Proof’ and ‘Lived In
Bars’ maintain that
quality with little
effort, lilting odes to
drunkenness and
unfulfilled desires,
swaying on saxophone one
minute and organ the
next. Like that middle
aged tabby though, ‘The
Greatest’ sags in
halfway through, getting
fat on a staple diet of
simple piano parts. It
even has a bulimic spot,
leaving Chan all but
unaccompanied for ‘Where
Is My Love’, where the
album’s graceful
simplicity implodes into
some nonsense about free
horses and that same
line over and over
again. Don’t the Black
Eyed Peas have a song
with a similar title?
You don’t want to be
mistaken for them Chan.
At times its like ‘The
Greatest’ is too old for
its own good, like the
songs are one step away
from losing all their
vitality and gathering
dust. The album teeters
on the brink of that
ravine, but Chan’s lusty
vocals always pull it
back. She’s still the
same glamorous wreck at
heart, and for all that
cats seem tame every now
and again, nobody really
knows what they’re
thinking.
Dave Rights
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