Cat Power- Jukebox
Released January 21, 2008
Chan Marshall, AKA Cat Power makes incredible music. I often equate Cat Power as the beautiful outcome that Leslie Feist should have been. Despite Cat Power’s incredible success she has still maintained her indie credibility. This can probably be credited to her raw sounding music, stripped usually to a guitar and vocals. ‘Jukebox’ however features the Dirty Delta Blues Band, who is the band that Cat Power has been touring with in the past few years. The Dirty Delta Blues Band give Marshall the life that her often overly droned out music needs.‘Jukebox’ is a album of covers, her second to date. The first release simply titled ‘The Cover Album’ was a far more modest release, without flashy album pictures and shiny metallic packaging (her second shiny album!). The tunes on her previous release are incredible slow, that’s the main difference between the two albums appearance aside. Marshall picks the finest songs to cover, she chooses tunes that people do not know, for the most part. She did do a super cover of “(I Can’t Get) Satisfaction” originally by the Rolling Stones on her first album, but she put it together in such a way that you would have no idea they were the same tune, absolutely flawless. What separates Cat Power from every other female solo recording artist is that her songs aren’t your conventional pop song. Realistically she is no different from any other female recording artist, but she has an element to her that separates her style. The quality of her songs are incredible, she crafts an acoustic song that is not conventionally an acoustic song. They come out dynamically different and playing alone she brings a liveliness to her solidity. It’s incredible how Cat Power can bring her own individual feel to other people’s songs. I love her cover of the Highwaymen’s song “Silver Stallion”. I think it’s much better than their original version. She really cuts the bullshit out of songs, breaking them down essentially to their essence. Her take on Hank Williams’ “Ramblin’ (Wo)Man” is really eerie, resonating a ton with his extremely shaky original version. A more lively take she does an extremely faithful cover of “Aretha, Sing One For Me”. The song layout on this album works really well to. She coyly slips in two original songs of her own. In such a way where the ignorant listener would even realize which songs were in fact hers or other people’s. She places her tune “Song To Bobby”, a tune for Dylan right after a cover she did of his song “I Believe in You”. ‘Jukebox’ is big. It was released as a regular and a special edition. The special edition contains an additional disc that has fives songs, that sound as if they could be easily put on the album itself, which is most definitely not a bad thing. The bonus discs’ second track is some of her finest work, borrowed from Moby Grape the song “Naked, If I Want To”. Initially she released a far more raw version of it on her first covers album. The version on ‘Jukebox’ is incredibly upbeat, backed up by a band. I like Cat Power ‘Jukebox’ much better than I like Bachman-Cummings’ (The Guess Who) ‘Jukebox’ released earlier last year. Chan Marshall really shows that younger people can make incredible music, and terrific covers (She put this album out on her 36th birthday, so maybe not that young…)Songs to Download: “Silver Stallion” and “Naked, If I Want To” both by Cat Power8/10
She's a real babe. 36!!!
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