Cat Power - The Greatest

When I first Chan’s earlier releases, I thought, if she lives long enough, she will be a great force in new music. With this release, it seems she’s going to live long enough. I’m one of the twelve people who watched her Trees video all the way through. That was her, out among the trees, from a distance, performing a whole lot of songs unaccompanied. At the time it may have been the most unusual music video ever made. This is very different. She’s teamed up with a bunch of fantastic musicians, as if it were an experiment to fill the empty spaces in her song with musical maturity and round it out a bit. I generally prefer singer-songwriters’ sparser arrangements to the full instrumentation, but in her case the extra instruments don’t take away from her voice. How could they? If anything she comes out more confident and forceful than ever before.

Listen (naked) now:

Author: listener | Category: Indie, Music Reviews | May 2007