Matador Records announced details of the upcoming Cat Power album and tour dates. The album is called The Greatest, and is new material, not a “hits” comp. Check out the paino-heavy title track:
I’m not crazy about the track… it sounds like Sarah McLachlan to me. What do you guys think?
Thanks to Gorilla vs. Bear and You Ain’t No Picasso for posting it first.
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I like the song, but I really hope thats not the actual cover art…
Cover is bloody awful. Wonder if shes sporting a grill of diamonds of gold in that mouth?
Song is beautiful in that Dusty In Memphis way. I adore it.
Cat Power has no business playing music in public.
i kind of think the cover is cool. and i like the song. i think theres a cool contrast between the two. its produced kind of lushly. smooth and light and pretty. and then that cover is just slopped together with paint or something. i think its cool. i dig it all. i hear the sarah mclachlan reference though. but not really. you say that about a lot of girls on pianos probably. i like it
The album art somehow reminds me of “The Commodore’s Greatest Hits” with the championship belt cover.
As for the song, it’s not that much of a detour from her past work–I do agree with the “Dusty in Memphis” comparison, though. It’s not quite ornamented enough to get me to echo the McLachlan sentiment.
I saw Chan perform a few years ago in Indy, and, despite my reservations, she was really good–passing around a bottle of whiskey at one point, and actually walking (without shoes) out into the crowd and sitting down on the floor, in the midst of many confused but entranced onlookers, to sing two songs.
1 love the song to death. it gets better with every listen.
yeah? was it at radio radio maybe? my friend saw her here in indy, its where im from, and he said it was awful…id like to see her regardless all the mixed stuff ive heard
yeah and by the way the song really does get better and better with every listen. i love it.
It was at Radio Radio…and reactions were mixed, especially about the end of the show, where her inebriation led her to embark on a so-awful-it-bordered-on-avant-garde drum solo while most were leaving.
I loved it, though.
Does anyone hear Moon River drifting through this song. How fucking awesome! Cat Power rulez!
cat power has always had a similar voice to sarah mclaughlan. Stereogum you is way off. This song is the fucking greatest, moon river and all.
The new song is really beautiful in my opinion. I’m excited to hear the rest, considering it’ll probably be her “grand expansive statement” (TM).
As for her live show, I caught her this past winter at Southpaw in Brooklyn. When she was on, it was beautiful, but her performance fell apart after a while, mostly because the crowd was atrociously rude and wouldn’t shut up. They talked through her entire performance. Really, what’s the point of going to a concert if you’re going to chat the entire time? I also feel as if half the crowd came just to watch her have a breakdown.
The cover art is like a kind of photoshop-for-beginners aesthetic you’d expect to see on some local-band demo cd not a well known artist on a big label with access to and cash for any of the greatest art, graphic design and photography in the world…
Again though, I am liking this song even more the 2nd time…
i think i’m the only one who really likes the cover.
the strings def sound like moon river. pretty. this is nothing compared to “great waves” though. that leaked right around the time of katrina and i couldn’t stop listening to it. her haunted haunting voice.
I am also digging both track and cover.
love her
It does sound like Sarah McLachlan! Holy shit. But then, I thought a Rilo Kiley song I heard recently sounded like Sheryl Crow, and I once compared emo to Foreigner. So maybe I’m just a curmudgeon.
Beautiful, Beautiful song
I’ve listened to the song a few times and I really love it. I hope she goes with this fuller kind of sound throughout the new album.
Come on…
The song is beautiful.
Like the languorous vocals; like the instrumentation.
Know anywhere the lyrics might be found?
Didn’t love this one at first – the melody is tricky and kind of slips by unnoticed. But I’ve not been able to stop for the last few days listening and listening. The lyrics are her most powerful (which is saying a lot) and the string and vocal arrangments are breathtaking. This piece feels much more cared-for and shined than any of her other pieces.
We could talk about her voice a bit too. She’s finding a real security in her voice – where it was a little hidden before, that brassiness in her voice is sounding better and better.
[It's frustrating that this is being compared to a Sarah McLaughlin song though. I don't really hear it.]
I want lyrics!
does anyone know the lyrics?
love her.
just can’t get over that damn song.
lovelovelove her.
[and love moonriver-strings too]
sarah mclachlan??
please see a psychiatrist and an ear doctor. Or just move on to poppier grounds.
the song beyond beautiful….
the song definitely gets better with each listen. and her haunting beautiful voice and lyrics overshadow any unfortunate sarah mclachlan resemblance. i’m currently searching for the full lyrics for the album..has anyone found them? and as for the cover art.. don’t judge the music by it’s cover. i’m sure she won’t let us down.
hurrah, new cat power!
just in time for the windy leaves of late autumn.
If you want to hear more of the moon river wafting in the background check out the medly that starts off this KCRW radio performance. Hears the URL for a video of the show in Real Player format.
http://kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=mb&air_date=02/27/03&tmplt_type=Show
non-sequitor: my favourite version of moon river is performed by david thomas (pere ubu) and chris cutler (henry cow).
I like ‘the greatest’. She absorbs and combines certain nashville feel to her work.
It’s oddly satisfying.
As far as the Sarah Mcglauphlin (sp) reference, the
track of her’s that sounds very similar to “The Greatest” is the song “Adia”…you can literally sing “Aida” on top of it for long stretches and it matches up with the backing music…that said, you can sing “Aida” on top of large sections of “Trouble” by Coldplay…and you can sing large sections of any of the above to the backing music of “Ode To My Family” by The Cranberries…and for that matter, probably a lot of other songs i’m forgetting that fit the following basic pattern: first chord happy, 2nd chord drops two notes down and sort of descends a little darkly, 3rd chord drops 2 more down and gets sort of dramatically sad and windswept, and the 4th chord come up 1 from the 3rd chord, ending the structure on a sort of hopeful happy note…It’s a very popular 4-chord pattern of late, you didn’t see it much in the 70′s, but since the mid-90′s it’s been en vogue…but here’s why it shouldn’t be thought of as a generic thing in Cat Power’s case…Cat Power
never made this pattern sound more beautiful (and she varies it far from the aforementioned pattern by song’s end, i mean just initially)…2nd of all, to what degree the stylings remind you a little of sarah mcglaughlin, she’s not neccesarily a bad word…her rep among the indie-elite has taken a battering due more to her being popular and guilty-by-association more than anything, and by the damn “angel” song that got played 10,000 times (don’t blame an artist when the radio station overkills them), but a song like “Possession” shows she’s got an intensely ethereal
prowess in her own right when she’s at her least commericial. But yea, even so, Chan Marshall is in a category all her own…her voice is so freiken real, and genuine, and endearing, and southernly
innocent almost, like you want to protect whatever fragile creature has made it this long, and remained that pure on planet earth. if you were forced to watch “american idol” singers after hearing cat power, you realize how silly “trying to sing well” sounds, compared to just “singing”…the trick to a great singer, is that they become unconcious to how their voice sounds, that’s when it quits coming from their head, and starts coming from their heart…it’s rare these days, hell it’s rare any period in time, but chan marshall is the premeire example…and also it redefines what a “great musician” is…it’s not always about how fast and spectacular someone can sound…yes, i’m sure chan marshall probably couldn’t play the guitar like stevie ray vaughn…but inversely, i don’t think there’s a chance in hell stevie ray vaughn could ever produce a sound as intimate and personal as chan marshall…so why is stevie ray vaughn “virtuosic” but chan marshall is “a great singer but just an ok musician” as reviewers so often point out? i beg to differ. it’s a stalemate….neither can play like the other (i’m just using SRV as one example, fill in any “super solo” guitarist or pianist you can think of)…sometimes, it’s harder to make something that can make someone cry, or want to put it on falling asleep to…or be that album someone reaches for AFTER the party, when they dont’ feel obligated to keep everyone happy and frollicking…the truth is, Chan Marshall is top-shelf vocally, lyrically, and musically, thee end. And I love the fact that her lyrics aren’t so pointed and literal that they’re like reading a 6th graders diary “i’m so sad you broke up with me/ what did i do/ im so lonely and hurt/ all i see is sadness” blech….ya know? I read these reviewers criticize Chan’s lyrics as being impossible to understand…lyrics aren’t always meant to be “understood” in the traditional sense…sometimes they’re more effective if they are like fragmented pieces of sense that keep your brain in a state of lucidity and wonderment, rather than beating you over the head with a specific stance or tale…I’m telling you people, 30 years from now, Chan Marshall will be looked back on as an EPIC TALENT in the history of American music.
this is absolute perfection. a classic. best thing she’s ever done. theres no pretense, no hiding behind art. just a beautiful song.
I’m writing a piece about the new record. Anybody have any unusual/typical Cat Power live anecdotes they want to share?
Holy shite, it’s NOTHING like Sarah fucking Mclaughlin! That’s practically the biggest insult I’ve EVER heard. You must really hate this album and Chan in general. Well, good for you. Crappy for the rest of us who are interested in what she’s putting out.
Haunting as usual, but far from unsettled, her voice is as melodic-Marborlo Red as ever, but with a relieved/relaxed twist to a handful of tracks. Yet, in contrast, the song “Hate” is the type of song that you can’t listen to on a night you’ve drank too much and happen to be near any edges or sharp things. The same could go for “Love & Communication”, depending on what sort of crazy relations you find yourself in at the time.
The guitar–especially in “Hate” and “The Moon” are fucking classic…she channels a timeless sound quality that will be appreciated for generations to come.
Few solo artists can touch her. Back when I first heard “Moon pix” I started calling her the female Elliot Smith…she’s on that level of brilliance with her writing & timeless sound.
Grade: A++
for all y’all who liked the opening track, you’re in for a treat with the rest of the album. i read it was recorded in tennessee, not sure memphis or nashville, with a full band of veteran session musicians on most tracks. and word is at least some of them will accompany chan on a world tour in support of the album next year. hopefully they will keep her on task, so to speak, and she can finally shed her reputation for weird live shows.
but anyway, this album is a clear departure from her earlier work, both lyrically and musically. there are even glimmers of optimism and happiness on some tracks. track 2 even sounds like van morrison, complete with horns. but don’t freak out. this album is 100 percent cat power. nothing could overcome that lush yet gritty, oh-so-sexy voice.
Does anyone know the exact lyrics for the song “Hate”? If so, would you please e-mail them to me at Rippcord@aol.com … I would be greatful.
Thanks!