Cat Power / The Covers Record
Matador
Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, hails from the same parched
singer/ songwriting terrain as Smog. Rather than engage in
another bout of potentially self-indulgent miserablism, she's
decided on her fifth album to apply her minimalist approach
to other people's songs. 'The Covers Record' features
some obscure material - two songs by little-known Greenwich
Village songwriter Michael Hurley, for instance, 'Devil's
Daughter' and 'Swee Dee Dee' - but the album works best
when you're familiar with the original songs and understand
what she's doing to them. On the Stones' '(I Can't Get No)
Satisfaction', for instance, she's dropped both Keef's riff
and the chorus, pacing through the less familiar terrain of
the verses, as if through a rock'n'roll ghost town, giving
an entirely different take on the song. Her version of The
Velvet Underground's 'I Found A Reason', cleared of smoke
and stripped of its shades, exposes the naked strength and
beauty of the original. Her stark, unhistrionic rendering of
'Wild Is The Wind', meanwhile, compares well with David Bowie's
more affected version. With her distressed, Southern-inflected
vocals and guitar/piano accompaniments tolling like perpetual
church bells, Cat Power brings these songs successfully into
her own, bleak domain. Spend too much time here, however, and
you might need an emergency injection of Kool & The Gang.
--
gender is just an excuse, relationship shouldn't just be an excuse,
love is often an excuse, although sometimes these excuses are all
we have to hold onto,
death is the reason and living is the celebration
- Beth Orton
--
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