Cat Power Covers LP

TAS Rated 4/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the May/June 2022 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Cat Power, the vocalist, songwriter, musician and producer Chan Marshall, returns with Covers, the third album of her celebrated reinterpretations of songs by classic and contemporary artists.

Cover songs have always occupied a crucial place in the Marshall canon, and Covers completes a trilogy of sorts, following beloved past Cat Power collections Jukebox (2008) and The Covers Record (2000). While she frequently delights and surprises with the songs she chooses to cover, it's Marshall's total commitment to the performance - imbuing the songs with a creative singularity that rivals her original work - that make Cat Power covers so special. Says Pitchfork, Marshall can "rearrange a song simply by squinting at it."

Produced in its entirety by Marshall, Covers features fully reimagined songs by Frank Ocean, Bob Seger, Lana Del Rey, Jackson Browne, Iggy Pop, The Pogues, Nick Cave, The Replacements and more, plus an updated rendition of her own song "Hate" from The Greatest (2006), retitled "Unhate" for this album.

Marshall's take on "Bad Religion" originated after performing the excoriating original "In Your Face", from 2018's Wanderer, on tour: "That song was bringing me down," she admits. "So I started pulling out lyrics from 'Bad Religion' and singing those instead of getting super depressed. Performing covers is a very enjoyable way to do something that feels natural to me when it comes to making music."

Covers closes with a powerful take on the Billie Holiday-associated standard "I'll Be Seeing You", which was inspired by recent losses within Marshall's creative inner circle - including Sun collaborator Phillippe Zdar, who tragically passed in 2019. "When people who you love have been taken from you, there's always a song that holds their memory in your mind," Marshall says. "It's a conversation with those on the other side, and it's really important for me to reach out to people that way."

Covers is the first album from Cat Power since Wanderer, her widely-acclaimed 2018 Domino debut, which earned rave reviews and features with the New York Times, The Guardian, The Cut, a NPR Tiny Desk, and a duet with Lana Del Rey on "Woman", which The New Yorker called a "trembling manifesto."

Marshall's work as Cat Power has defied genre and convention, her legacy rippling through the work of a wide range of contemporary musical luminaries. Once the face of Chanel, her music "will one day be spoken about the way we talk about Bob Dylan's music, or Neil Young's music, but until then, she exists in the sweet spot between cult favorite and widely accepted genius" (Vulture).

Chan Marshall's third collection of covers is her widest ranging yet, illustrating her talent for radical reinvention.

She excels at digging into the emotional quicksand of each song to draw out surprising themes and angles.

Often, cover records are dismissed as simply a bit of fun or as an indulgent aside to an artists' original output, but when Cat Power does it, it's nothing less than soul-nourishing.

Marshall reinvents and inhabits others' songs so completely that they sound like originals, and 'Covers' is no exception: The songs here veer from just-recognizable to barely recognizable at all, with the focus on her unmistakable voice, often gorgeously multi-tracked and highlighted by spare production.

Covers is a treat for fans, and reaffirms that Marshall can find the Cat Power - as well as new meanings - in the music that moves her.

Notably, there is an echo of defiance and resiliency throughout Covers, delivered by one of indie-rock's most enduring female voices.