CAT POWER: THE GREATEST (2006)
1) The Greatest; 2) Living
Proof; 3) Lived In Bars; 4) Could We; 5) Empty Shell; 6) Willie; 7) Where Is My
Love; 8) The Moon; 9) Islands; 10) After It All; 11) Hate; 12) Love &
Communication; 13*) Up And Gone; 14*) Dreams.
Yes, I totally agree that Cat Power makes
unpredictable records — the only thing you can always predict is that the next
one will be just as sad and introspective as the previous one, but as to the
melodic content, arrangements, influences, they will be constantly reshuffled,
as befits the proverbial Artist In Constant Search Of The Grail. The only
problem is, you can also be sure that not every such combination will work. The
many ingredients on You Are Free
made it work better than anything she'd ever done before — and for her next
album, she would make an even less predictable move: to Memphis, of all places. Considering that she was born and raised in
Georgia, and allegedly traveled a lot through the South in her younger days
(including a brief schooling period in Memphis, among other locations), this
«back to roots» thing may not seem too
surprising; but whether it did her any good is not clear.
The entire album, named after its first track
(and I bet most people mistook it for a best-of compilation originally, which
could at least partially account for the drastic increase in sales...), is a
collection of generally slow, moody, piano- and acoustic-based country (or is
that country-soul?) ballads — perfectly normal
singer-songwriterish balladry, although Chan still hates the idea of a
repetitive chorus, normally sung (with Chan's pretty, raspy, crackling voice
rarely rising above or falling below mid-level volume) and normally played, as
she enlists some local Memphis pros to assist her with the arrangements (the
most famous of these is arguably Teenie Hodges, the long-time collaborator with
Al Greene and the co-author of ʽTake Me To The Riverʼ). As unpredictable as
the decision is in general, you can still feel it ties in with her aesthetics —
here we take old school R&B, soul, and country music, and reroute them to
match the Cat Power vision, just as we did that with Delta blues and
ʽSatisfactionʼ years ago.
Unfortunately, it also means a return to
general boredom. Where You Are Free
was an album of songs, The Greatest
is an album of moods, or, rather, of one mood — the Cat Power mood, set up on
the title track and gently (with just a subtle bit of turbulence) floating you
all the way to the end. The pianos tinkle, the guitars punctuate, the strings
glide, the rhythm section is underpaid, and, once again, there is not much
beyond basic atmosphere, charisma, and «psychologism» to make the music linger
on longer in your brain than the time it takes it to float by. For consistency's
sake, if I rarely have a good word to throw in about «commercial»
country-tinged singer-songwriters with little musical talent, but a pretty face
(and other body parts) to gain traction through video imagery, I honestly don't
see how I could generate good words about an album like this — no better and no
worse than literally thousands of such records, with the only difference being
that «commercial» singer-songwriters at least try to write actual songs and
fail, whereas Chan does not even try. Not this time, at least.
I suppose that the underlying artistic theme
here is «humility», as we learn from the title track (formally a tale of an
aspiring boxer, but an allegory is always an allegory): "Once I wanted to
be the greatest... and then came the rush of the flood... Melt me down, into big
black armour, leave no trace of grace, just in your honour...". I assume
that "greatest" here does not imply simplistic fame and fortune, for
which she never struggled in the first place, but rather just the basic desire
to stand out from the rest — and now, it is as if she is acknowledging how
wrong that was, and how preferable it is to be "melted down". This is
nice, but, just like before, there is a contradiction, or, at least, an
impasse: if this is so, I am automatically cleared of all responsibility for
writing a negative review, because there's nothing like a negative review to
help stabilize a sense of humility, and besides, if she no longer wants to be "the greatest",
then how could a record of hers be "the greatest"?
With this logical problem on my mind, I find it
hard to concentrate on any of the individual songs. There are tunes about loss,
betrayal, and loneliness; a few about hatred; one grungy Neil Young-ian epic
that could have been decent if it made at least a little effort to evolve and
develop itself (ʽLove & Communicationʼ); a few deconstructions of classic
folk and country patterns (for Cat Power, deconstructing a song is always
understood literally — as in, when instead of transporting a boombox, you take
all of it apart and carry all the individual parts and bolts in a bundle, for
no reason other than you like being
all encumbered and messy); and maybe just a few sonic gimmicks here and there
(the brass fanfare on ʽCould Weʼ, the nonchalant whistling on ʽAfter It Allʼ)
that can serve as delimiters between tracks, just because your tired mind
cannot seek out any others. And, of course, if you really so desire, you can
burrow deep inside and feast on subtlety after subtlety — but then be sure to
make room for those hundreds of singer-songwriters, cruelly bypassed by
critical fame, who would very much like to claim that they can be just as
subtle, only they never thought about claiming to be the carriers of Cat Power.
In short, she's back to her usual tricks,
except this time, doing it in such an accessible manner that using the album as
background muzak would be a perfectly easy task for just about anybody living
in the quiet world of easy listening / adult contemporary / neo-country etc.
Conversely, this is the reason why I don't give it a thumbs down — the album
raises no negative emotion whatsoever, and with all this professional
musicianship, and with Chan using her voice in a wise and restricted manner, it
is pleasant and, dare I say this, intelligent background muzak. But it does not
succeed in involving me on any serious emotional level, and its amorphousness is
quite a bitchin' disappointment after the tight focus and shapefulness of You Are Free. Oh well, at least I hope
those Memphis musicians were well paid for their work, however aimless it may
have been.
I actually think this is probably her best album (though, I have to say, I'm not a big Cat Power fan to begin with, so it's all pretty relative). It's the only one where I thought, while listening to it, 'Hey, this is pretty fun!' (again, really relative when talking about Cat Power - what I mean is: it sounded nice and kinda kept my attention). All her other albums had this scent of boredom to them. But, as with all her albums, I have to say that I can't really remember any of the songs well - except 'Willie', which I really think is just a fantastic arrangement (those high voices, that harmonica (?), that repetitive, yet pleasant piano riff). 'Willie' also holds the honour of being one of the three songs of Cat Power that I can remember from heart (togheter with 'I don't blame you' and 'Sea of love' (a cover, yeah, but she really made it her own). It really is the only album of hers I would listen to again, because it's the only one that seemed somewhat consistent in tone. But again, if you would have to compare it with the best albums from other artists, well... You shouldn't compare too much, I guess.
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