Cat Power – ‘The Greatest’ (Madador) Released 30/01/06

By giving her album the rather hubristic title ‘The Greatest’, you might think that Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, was tempting fate. She seems to have got away with it, however, if the uniformly favourable reviews that the record has received are anything to go by. But then, Chan Marshall is one of those hugely talented, relentlessly creative artistes who hovers just outside of mainstream indie popularity – like, say, Conor Oberst three or four years ago – and who can barely look at a guitar without critics scribbling a fevered nine-out-of-ten. So is all that praise undeserved? Are the dissenting voices scoffing at the album’s name actually right?

Not quite. What has caused friction amongst many fans is Marshall’s hook-up with a full Memphis band, including Al Green’s former guitarist, which has infused her sound with a soupcon of southern soul and a polished jazz slinkiness which some have dismissed as MOR. There are certainly elements of this new direction that grate: the backing vocals (which sound oddly like Cher at times) are sometimes intrusive, while the smooth, 70s sound seems at odds with the nuggets of raw feeling that she lays before us in her writing. Yet the album’s title track is a more restrained reworking of the Memphis influence – it’s a glorious paean to faded youthful aspirations, clad only in sensuous rhythms and subtle piano and strings.

Some of the most sparkling moments come when the band are thus restricted: ‘Where Is My Love’ has the barest arrangement of any track on the album, and is tender and bittersweet, while ‘The Moon’ has a quiet beauty which makes its vulnerable, insecure lyrics even more heartbreaking. They’re a return to the intimacy which is lost on some of the more embellished tracks, like the bouncy, horn-driven ‘Could We’.

Much has been written about Marshall’s voice, but it really is wonderful – it’s not just the smoky, sexiness which makes it special, it’s the oldness and the echoing aloneness as she sings which imbues every line with unexpected shades of emotion.  ‘All that’s left is an empty shell /All my heart is crushed’ she sings on ‘Empty Shell’, and her voice resonates with weariness. Proof if it were needed that, for all the occasional forays into mellow, coffee-table territory, this is a record with a heart – one which aches and bleeds.