Cat Power – SunThe once-troubled singer returns.
Has she finally got her shit together?
In art as in life, Chan Marshall is a rolling stone, moving from one extreme to another, from one place to the next. She’s been hospitalised after alcohol and drug abuse; been a muse to Karl Lagerfeld and Wong Kar-wai, and been photographed semi-nude by Richard Avedon. This, her ninth album was recorded in L.A., Miami and Paris, and its standout track, “Ruin” goes like this: “Saudi Arabia Dhaka Calcutta Soweto Mozambique Istanbul Rio Rome Argentine Chile Mexico Taiwan Great Britain Belfast to the desert in Spain Wollongong Tokyo some little bitty island in the middle of the Pacific”.
Marshall, aka Cat Power, started out making morose little songs in the mid-90s, when her voice was a rather sullen, detuned instrument. Since then it’s become one of the most distinctive and beautiful in modern music: earnest, sexy and deep, but sometimes modulating into a spidery croon like Karen Dalton’s. Her breakthrough came with Moon Pix (1998) before You Are Free (2003) pared back the palette to smudged, overdriven guitar and limpid piano. Eddie Vedder delivered smouldering backing vocals and Dave Grohl played drums. On her next record, The Greatest (2006), the fragmentary soulfulness of her previous work was distilled into a warm, honeyed dram, creating a classic modern country-soul LP whose backing band included Al Green and Booker T vets.
Barreling through these styles, as well as damaging her mental health to breaking point, led her to L.A. and a four year relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi which has recently ended. She recorded songs only to have a friend tell her they were “boring” and “depressing”, sending her into months of inactivity, before starting again and ditching her guitar and piano for drums and synths. These became the bedrock for Sun, with the old sounds eventually folded in – aside from on “Ruin”, she plays every instrument.
