Cat Power ‎– Covers

18-01-2022

Charlyn Marie "Chan" Marshall (born January 21, 1972), better known by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, occasional actress, and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall's first band, but has become her stage name as a solo artist. Born in Atlanta, Marshall was raised throughout the southern United States, and began performing in local bands in Atlanta in the early 1990s. After opening for Liz Phair in 1993, she worked with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, with whom she recorded her first two albums, "Dear Sir" (1995) and "Myra Lee" (1996), on the same day in 1994. In 1996, she signed with Matador Records, and released a third album of new material with Shelley and Foljahn, "What Would the Community Think". Following this, she released the critically acclaimed "Moon Pix" (1998), recorded with members of Dirty Three, and "The Covers Record" (2000), a collection of sparsely arranged cover songs. After a brief hiatus she released "You Are Free" (2003), featuring guest musicians Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, followed by the soul-influenced "The Greatest" (2006), recorded with numerous Memphis studio musicians. A second album of cover tracks, "Jukebox", was released in 2008. In 2012 she released the self-produced Sun, which debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200, the highest-charting album of her career to date. Critics have noted the constant evolution of Cat Power's sound, with a mix of punk, folk and blues on her earliest albums, and elements of soul and other genres more prevalent in her later material. Marshall's releases as Cat Power have frequently been noted by critics for their somber, blues-influenced instrumentation and melancholy lyrics, leading LA Weekly to dub her the "queen of sadcore". Marshall, however, claims her music is often misinterpreted, and that many of her songs are "not sad, [but] triumphant." She has recounted blues, old soul music, British rock 'n' roll, as well as hymns and gospel music as being integral influences on her. Cat Power's early releases have been described as blending elements of punk, folk, and blues, while her later releases (post-2000) began to incorporate more sophisticated arrangements and production. "The Greatest" (2006), Marshall's seventh release, was heavily soul-influenced and incorporated R&B elements; the Memphis Rhythm Band provided backing instrumentation on the album. Unlike her previous releases, which featured sparse guitar and piano arrangements, "The Greatest" was described by Marshall biographer Sarah Goodman as her first "full-blown studio record with sophisticated production and senior players backing [Marshall] up." An artist unafraid to bare her soul and follow her muse anywhere, Cat Power's Chan Marshall pens emotionally unflinching songs and performs them with strength and vulnerability. "Covers" is the eleventh studio album by American musician Cat Power, the stage name of American singer-songwriter Chan Marshall. Her third collection of cover songs, following 2000's "The Covers Record" and 2008's "Jukebox", the album was released worldwide on January 14, 2022 by Domino Recording Company. "Covers" is Marshall's third collection of cover songs, following 2000's "The Covers Record" and 2008's "Jukebox". The album was recorded alongside Marshall's live band: guitarist Adeline Jasso, bassist and keyboardist Erik Paparozzi, and drummer Alianna Kalaba. Marshall was not planning on recording a covers album, and was originally intent on recording original compositions. She explained: "I got in the studio and I wanted the band to relax, so I started composing improvisationally, just getting them to play certain things that sounded good together. For the first four songs we recorded that day, I had no idea what the vocals would be or what the song would be. They were four songs that I had no intention of covering. I just wanted the band to warm up, and when I got them to play something that I liked the sound of, I went to the vocal booth and I said, 'Just don't stop.' Then I was like, 'What cover should I sing over this music that is playing ?'. "Unhate" is a new recording of "Hate", a song from Marshall's 2006 album "The Greatest". A re-recording of one of Marshall's older songs has appeared on each of her cover albums. This has been inspired by the live performances of Bob Dylan, who frequently rearranges the majority of his own work when touring. Marshall explained: "The amount of live shows that I've played, I won't play a song for 20 years or something, and then I'll come back around and there'll be something in my life, present time, later in life, that will make me want to play something that I wrote before, but there's a whole 'nother set of life experiences why I want to play it again. That informs the music and the change of lyrics at times." The melody to her cover of Frank Ocean's "Bad Religion" is similar to the melody of "In Your Face", a song from her previous album Wanderer. Marshall said that she "started feeling more and more angry inside" while performing the latter song live, a track she described as "basically a ballad to the white 1% male". She said: "Every time I sang that song live, it didn't matter if I was calm or relaxed or whatever. I kept getting more and more angry with the reality of what it made me think about, and so just one night switched the lyrics to 'Bad Religion' and I felt so much better." The cover of The Pogues' "A Pair of Brown Eyes" was recorded by Marshall alone using a Mellotron. From the cover of Tom Waits' "Yesterday Is Here" on "Dear Sir" to the version of Rihanna's "Stay" on "Wanderer", reinterpreting the work of artists she loves has always been a key part of Chan Marshall's music. Roughly once a decade, she serves up an album's worth of thoughtfully chosen and performed covers; the first, 2000's "Covers Album", came out of a period when she needed to find respite from writing her own songs. Since then, she's used these collections as reflections of where she is as an artist and a person. Coming after 2018's wounded yet liberated "Wanderer", "Covers" shares a similar state of mind. Some of the best moments find her reflecting on friends, lovers, and identities lost to time, as on her hushed version of "I'll Be Seeing You," a tribute to Philippe Zdar, the late producer who worked with her on Sun. Two other highlights, "Against the Wind" and "A Pair of Brown Eyes", which trades the Pogues' squeezebox and pipes for a woozy Mellotron, focus on the passing of time and changing perspectives on life, and Marshall strips both of their swagger to bring their poignancy to the fore. She also manages to make her version of "Here Comes a Regular" sound even more desolate than the Replacements' original, and transforms the exquisitely aloof sorrow of Nico's "These Days" into an up-close confessional. As on "The Covers Record" and "Jukebox", Marshall unifies the sound of all the songs she pays tribute to into something unmistakably hers. Backed by her Wanderer band, she brings a somber sultriness to Frank Ocean's "Bad Religion," recognizes another expert balladeer with her sweltering version of Lana Del Rey's "White Mustang," and zooms in on the battle between despair and hope within "Pa Pa Power," a song by Ryan Gosling's underappreciated indie band Dead Man's Bones. And like so many other times during her career, she does a lot with a little on "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," using barely more than an upright bass and pedal steel (and, of course, her warm, knowing vocals) to connect with Kitty Wells' original and make it her own. "Covers" is a treat for fans, and reaffirms that Marshall can find the Cat Power, as well as new meanings, in the music that moves her. Featuring songs by Frank Ocean, Lana Del Rey, Nick Cave, and more, Chan Marshall's third collection of covers is her widest ranging yet, illustrating her talent for radical reinvention. It can take a keen set of ears to tell when Chan Marshall is singing someone else's tune. Take her rendition of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," which opens 2000's "The Covers Record". Her voice dragging over spindly guitar, she sounds like a broken bird in a burned-out nest. Where the Stones' swaggering anthem was a hot-blooded rush, Marshall's version is hushed and dolorous, a wilted lily in an airless mausoleum. It's not just a question of mood: She excises the song's entire chorus, leaving only vignettes that feel like disconnected snapshots of a deep and unrelenting depression. Where the Stones' song revels in a surfeit of emotion, Cat Power's anhedonic dirge is a lament for the very impossibility of feeling anything at all. To render a song so unrecognizable can appear irreverent, but Marshall has never come off as ironic or trolling. Even her most radical reinterpretations feel tender, searching, and, above all, thoughtful. And there are many : In addition to what are now three collections of cover songs, with the arrival of her latest album, "Covers", most of her releases contain at least one song made famous by another singer. Her choices can be canonical or idiosyncratic : She's tackled Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, and Billie Holiday, but also Liza Minelli, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Ca$h Money rappers Hot Boys. Long before indie rock's cloistered scene had given way to a more diverse and dynamic landscape, Marshall reminded her listeners that life didn't begin with the Velvet Underground (even though she covered them too). The widest ranging of any of her covers collections yet, "Covers" pushes beyond the habitual melancholy that has marked much of her work. In bold colors and vivid relief, it illustrates her talent for radical reinvention. Her choices are audacious right from the opening track : "Bad Religion," a total teardown of Frank Ocean's 2012 single about nursing emotional wounds. In place of the original's gospel organs and '60s soul strings, Marshall swaps in piano backed by a subtle but muscular rock rhythm section. She not only changes the song's key; she writes new chords and even a new melody. And while some of her lyrical edits might seem minor on the page, "Praise the Lord/Hallelujah, little girl" in place of "Allahu akbar", her delivery brings these lines to the forefront, drawing out "Lord" into four agonized syllables that feel like a physical bloodletting. The most striking line of all is her own addition : "All just stuck in the mud/Praying to the invisible above," an act of supplication that teases out the song's implicit theme of faith and illuminates it like a cross up on the wall.

1 Bad Religion

2 Unhate

3 Pa Pa Power

4 White Mustang

5 A Pair Of Brown Eyes

6 Against The Wind

7 Endless Sea

8 These Days

9 It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels

10 I Had A Dream Joe

11 Here Comes A Regular

12 I'll Be Seeing You