Cat Power
You Are Free
(Matador Records)
As is the trend of the past six years or so, some artists take features from various styles of music and try to blend them together to get an \original"" sound they can call their own. Usually, these piecemeal efforts don't make for great music (hello, rap-metal). However, there are some artists who accomplish this task quite well. Take Chan (pronounced ""Shawn"") Marshall, who records and performs under the name Cat Power.
The different elements that Cat Power incorporates into her music equate into more than the sum of their parts. To describe her sound as ""indie folk, white girl blues"" doesn't begin to do it justice. Cat Power's fifth full-length release You Are Free, her first album of original material in nearly five years, exemplifies her unique sound beautifully. While not as melancholy and sullen as her other albums, You Are Free still employs Cat Power's signature sound.
If Sinead O'Connor tried to impersonate Bjork, it would sound a lot like Cat Power's voice--chalky, gruff and breathy. Cat Power couples this with her sparse instrumentation. You Are Free uses simple piano lines in minor keys, wandering guitar notes barely suggesting folky chords, direct drum beats and, of course, Cat Power's own voice layered on itself. That's basically it. Cat Power accomplishes this with a little help from her friends and celebrity fans, Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, who contribute drumming and vocal talents, respectively.
The production on You Are Free can go either way, shoddy or roughly intimate. This is surprising seeing as how Adam Kasper, who has worked on albums for Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam, recorded You Are Free. Guitars twang slightly out of tune on chord changes and, sometimes, Cat Power's overlapped voice doesn't quite match up with her real voice. But are these bad things?
Cat Power herself would probably say no. She is infamous for her anti-star attitude and eccentric, unpredictable live shows. It seems You Are Free continues this stance. On ""Free"" Cat Powers instructs, ""Don't be in love with the autograph/ Just be in love when you scream that song/ All night long."" In ""He War"" she flatly sings, ""I'm not that hot new chic/ And if you want me to run with it/ We're onto your same old trick.""
On You Are Free, Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder are credited as ""D.G."" and ""E.V."" so as to disguise their identities. A hip star would love to broadcast the fact that he or she has celebrity friends in high places. In addition, ""Half of You"" and ""Baby Doll"" sound like they could be in the Anthology of American Folk Music. Equally unfashionable, Cat Power covers a version of ""Crawlin' Black Spider,"" by blues legend John Lee Hooker, re-titled ""Keep on Runnin'.""?? She also does a haunting rendition of ""Werewolf"" originally by folk singer Michael Hurley. Can you see these being played in rotation at a radio station near you? Probably not.
Trends be damned: Cat Power is here to play; take it or leave it.
