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Cat Power, The Greatest

by The Bridge
03/30/2006

Subtitle: Diary of a Love Affair Between Myself and The Music of Cat Power

Chapter 13: The Adventurous Album

At this point in the story, I have heralded Cat Power as a genius on all fronts. A master of interpretation to rival Nina Simone, a singer with a voice as strangely potent as Bob Dylan's, and a writer of songs whose gut impact defies comparison. I pleaded her case passionately and loudly against her detractors, developing a precise rebuttal for all of the standard "Cat Power Sucks" arguments:

Her arrangements are so lo-fi and the guitar parts are stupid simple. Anyone could do that stuff. She clearly doesn't have chops.

And the Ramones were what, brain surgeons? Some of Cat Power's songs have actual time signature shifts.

Have you seen her live? She's either smacked outta her mind or playing crazy to sell tickets. She never finishes anything!

I've seen her twice and gotten a decent half-set each time, with three or four moments of absolute transendence. I can think of more than a few artists you wouldn't get that from if you followed the whole damned tour.

Have you heard her new album? Sounds like some Carly Simon crap.

I'm sure it's fabulous. Dickhead.

So it's very fitting that her newest record is called The Greatest, and that it sucks.

No, no, wait! That it initially sucks. I mean, that I thought it did. Baby, come back, lemme explain. See, here's how we hooked up, Cat Power and I: I was sitting at the CD store where I used to work, staring at a reflection of myself in the window and thinking powerfully self-loathing thoughts, getting on the kind of pity trip were you start to enjoy hating yourself. The store's sound system, which had been warbling dimly in the back of my conciousness, suddenly demanded my attention: there was this voice, this voice that sounded like a wound personified. The guitar stumbled pitifully around Marshall's sandpapery mutterings, which grew louder and louder until she did indeed sound like a cat - an abused one. It was fabulous. Here, I thought, is a chick who knows to drown in her sorrows. A chick who knows the entertainment value of a bloody wreck.

So I headed straight for my eternally miserable alcoholic co-worker, whose pick this undoubtedly was. He filled me in on all the details, and that night I took the entire Cat Power section home with me and got my bum on. Best cry I've ever had.

Enter the new disc. Ooo. Problem.

My initial reaction was to text the following message to a friend: I don't know who's feeding anti-depressants to Chan Marshall, but they need to knock it off. Not that the lyrics were particulary cheery - in fact, if you read all of the songs, this sounds for all the world like a break-up album. It's just that the whole thing has a friendly, optimistic vibe, a subtle dash of Motown/Stax groovin' - at times it's even danceable. Not the mopey, goth girl sort of dancing you might do to the faster tracks on her last album (You Are Free), either. Happy little shufflefoot moments.

It was jarring. I made it as far as the seventh track, "Where Is My Love": "Where is my love/Safe and warm/Close to me/In my arms/Finally..." Unable to take this kind of language from the woman who turned the Stones' "Satisfaction" into a nervous breakdown, I turned it off and threw on some Portishead, who are supposed to sound like lovelorn dips. The next time I gave it a chance, I discovered that I had thrown in the towel right before the key track. "The Moon" is a classic Cat Power sucker-punch - a wanly crooned meditation on mortality and permanence, love and death: "The moon is not only beautiful/It is so far away/The moon is not only ice cold/It is here to stay." This is coupled with a somnulent strumming melody that was built for blue-moon gazing. When Marshall shifts from singing about the moon to singing to it, as if it were an emotionally unavailable lover, she makes it clear that, when it comes to comforting thoughts, she'll take what she can get: "When they lay me six feet underground/Will the big bad beautiful you be around?"

The next step to forgiveness was the brilliant "Love & Communication," which finds Marshall warning and/or apologizing to a lover for the various poisons of intimacy against a stringe arrangement that lurches with a woozy determination reminiscent of a drunken husband.

At this point I decided to back it up and give the first half of the album another crack. With my spirits lifted and mind open, I found that tracks two and three ("Living Proof" and "Lived in Bars," which bests the Piano Man at boozing nostalgia) make "The Greatest" the very best album Carly Simon never recorded, instead of Carly Simon crap. And now I mean this as positive.

I still can't quite reconcile with "Where Is My Love," with its syrupy piano and Marshall's sedated show-tune delivery. (Remember when Bjork covered "Like Someone In Love" and it was quirky, heartfelt, gooey-sweet fun? Yeah, well, that was Bjork, and she gets away with wearing dead swans, too. Doesn't mean everyone should do it.) And there are a couple of dullards: "Willie" never seems to get a foothold on its own melody, and the narrative wants to be clearer than it is. "Hate" is all right, if you like to hear Marshall doing inferior rehashes of her older material. But overall, "The Greatest," like a true southern belle, has enough charm and highlights to ensure that you'll wanna save a dance or two for it.

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