CAT POWER: SUN (2012)
1) Cherokee; 2) Sun; 3) Ruin;
4) 3,6,9; 5) Always On My Own; 6) Real Life; 7) Human Being; 8) Manhattan; 9)
Silent Machine; 10) Nothin But Time; 11) Peace And Love.
I don't really know what it is that makes so
many analog-reared artists these days to convert to electronica sooner or later
— apparently, there's this idea floating around in the air that playing guitars
and pianos is «so 20th century», and that there's no way you can avoid electronic
sound generation and programmed patterns if you want to stare into the future
rather than stagnate in the past. Apparently, this idea is much stronger than
the reminder that electronic music is
a product of the 20th century, and that way too many «electronic escapades» of
modern indie artists end up sounding even more retro (for instance, hearken all
the way back to 1980's synth-pop) than whatever they were doing prior to that.
In other words, electronic music as the key to the future is no longer a
win-only option — these days, it's just another way of preserving the status
quo.
Still, I guess that in the case of Cat Power
anything works that can lead the artist away from another puddle of depressed,
minimalistic, unmemorable streams of conscious and towards a more concise
melodic shape for her compositions — and, luckily for us all, her embrace of
electronic beats and pulses managed to put her back on the same track that
made You Are Free such a
satisfactory experience. Most of these songs she recorded all by herself, only
utilizing musicians from Jukebox's
«Dirty Delta Blues Band» on a couple of tracks; but there are quite a few
acoustic overdubs as well, clothing the electronic skeletons, and the mix is
very tasteful. Honestly, she is not just embracing electronics because it is
the trendy thing to do — or if she does, she at least manages to coax such
sounds out of all her synthesizers and computers so as to agree with her
emotional constitution: dark, paranoid, psychic textures all around.
A good example is the title track —
uninteresting drum machine beat aside, the harsh, grey synth canvas, reminding
of an endless cloud front swooping across the sky, make a cool contrast with
the opening "here comes, here comes, here comes the Sun", clearly an
allusion to George Harrison but with the meaning reversed: in this song, the
coming of the Sun seems to rather mean "the end of the world" than
the hope of redemption and salvation, as she sings about the distant period in
time when the Sun is expected to expand and burn down all life on Earth. The
song's quietly dramatic flavor is enhanced with several layers of electronics
and overdubs of background vocals, and it works in a Dead Can Dance sort of
way, even though the overall sonic combination is much simpler (after all, Chan
Marshall is not really a studio tech wiz, and for her first serious experience
in harnessing complex studio technologies, this is a great success).
Elsewhere, she relies on electronics as the
backbone for a dance-oriented experience: ʽ3,6,9ʼ combines elements of trip-hop
and hip-hop (as well as a bit of a nursery rhyme for the chorus), but
everything is still infused with the Cat Power atmosphere, as she (fortunately)
makes no effort to get into tough street rapping, but simply applies her usual
tired, brooding, "been-to-hell-and-back" voice to the new pattern —
and it ain't great, but it works. ʽReal Lifeʼ also features her half-singing,
half-rapping, but without betraying the usual vocal timbre and intonation, although
I am not sure if I like the somewhat «preaching» attitude she takes on here,
energized with all the heavy beats ("sometimes you gotta do what you don't
want to do / to get away with an unordinary life" — really?). But somehow
these things never sound irritating — on the contrary, there's something
enchanting about how she manages to marry these conventional dance practices
with closeted, introspective brooding.
The songs that got most of the attention,
having been released as singles, are actually the ones that are least dependent
on electronics and feature her backing band — ʽRuinʼ and ʽCherokeeʼ. The former
is a universalist Cassandra-style lament about the ultimate fate of human
society, spinning atop an enticing piano riff that sounds as if it was sampled
from a ballroom version of ʽLa Cucarachaʼ and then, in the chorus, riding a
good old disco bassline, which, of course, makes the repetitive chorus lyrics
("what are we doing? we're sitting on a ruin!") even more ironic.
Likewise, ʽCherokeeʼ is also built on a contrast — a song of love and death,
all echoey pianos and high-soaring wailing guitar trills, with an unforgettable
chorus of "bury me, marry me to the sky" (an invocation where both
parts have to be understood as semantically equivalent — thus, love and death
are actually the same thing, if it's sexy enough for you). I think we could all
have a good grin at the deadly seriousness and pretentiousness of the song, but
it pulls me in by means of sheer craft — I really like how the guitars, pianos,
and vocals mesh together, and the impression can be interpreted as romance or mourning or both at the same time,
and the bottomline is, if the music totally matches the lyrics, everything
about the lyrics is forgivable.
The album's conceptually simplest song also
happens to be its longest — ʽNothin But Timeʼ, a song of unexpected hope
addressed to the younger generation ("you ain't got nothing' else but
time, and they ain't got nothin' on you... your world is just beginning"),
strolls on for 11 minutes at the same tempo and on top of the same two-note
piano melody. I am not sure why (particularly about the instrumental coda —
for some reason, after the song fades out around a still reasonable
seven-minute mark, it just has to come back again and drive that riff even
deeper in your skull for an extra four minutes), but I do like the arrangement
and the surprising optimism in the chorus: it is almost as if, after having
preached about the end of the world as we know it and her own mortality and
the impossibility to resolve any problems for so long, she wants to leave us
with one big "Well, it's all curtains for me and for you, but let's at
least leave some hope for the little children" — and I'm fine with that.
The amusing extra note here is that she invites Iggy Pop to help her out with
the chorus harmonies, and he makes the best of his melodic baritone to join her
in a fit of tenderness. Yes indeed, there's no one out there like old Iggy to
wish for a brighter future for our children.
The record does end on a more grown-up note,
though: ʽPeace And Loveʼ, another piece of paranoid, half-sung, half-rapped
electronic rock, seems to push forward an agenda of "grown-up, progressive
hippieism" ("I'm a lover but I'm in it to win"), and, again, it
does this in a musically intelligent way — the hookline is a repetitive string
of "na-na-na-na"'s, just the kind of thing you'd expect from some old
Flower Power band, but they're sung in a minor key and the whole thing sounds
like a troubled warning to mankind... as does this entire album, as a matter of
fact. It may be called Sun, and
there might be a rainbow coming through that front sleeve, but it is still only
trying to break out from the darkened sky, and the expression on that face is
anything but conventionally «sunny». The good news is, this is one more of
those few albums in her catalog where she really comes across as a musician
with a strong personality, not as a personality with weak musicianship — so if
electronics continues to be this good to her, bring it on. For the record, it
did take me a few listens to get warmed up to this new twist, so the thumbs up
rating is a bit hard-earned; but it does feel good, you know, when repeated
listens eventually lead to satisfaction of the senses, rather than dumb
frustration.
I love the whole 'Kashmir' vibe going on in 'Peace & Love'. Easily one of her best songs, me thinks.
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