The dirty little secret about Chan Marshall is that she may actually have her shit together. As a recent Harp magazine interview pointed out (in between Marshall's musings on interest rates, real estate, and finances), she's spent the past decade building a successful career without even employing a manager. It's a feat that few, if any, of her contemporaries have been able to pull off-- and given that, at this very moment, a significant portion of the indie music world is salivating for tomorrow's release of the seventh Cat Power record, it would seem she's pulled it off quite well.
Of course, the Cat Power allure has always been tied up in Marshall's notoriously seasick live performances. In 2001, the woman who jumped into the audience mid-performance and shoved me aside while tearfully fleeing the Irving Plaza stage certainly didn't seem capable of balancing a checkbook, let alone single-handedly negotiating a more generous contract with her record label (as the Harp article alleges). But then, the public-vs.-private tightrope-walk is as old as marketing itself: Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno, either. Still, it's impossible to ignore the pull of the Beautifully Tortured stereotype, no matter what reality lies behind it. But if we didn't want Beautifully Tortured, we'd be obsessing over Norah Jones.
That brings us to The Greatest. Not to knock Norah, but she isn't tortured-- and neither is this album, which, if Nic Harcourt or VH1 get their hands on it, could be battling "Don't Know Why" for airplay supremacy on Mom's car stereo in the coming months. Like all Cat Power records, The Greatest is a mostly sad, heartbroken, hopeless, rainy-day affair; it just isn't damaged. For that reason, it's also going to gain her a lot of new fans.
The Greatest was recorded in Memphis, with several of that city's veteran studio musicians serving as her backing band, including Mabon "Teenie" Hodges on guitar, his brother Leroy "Flick" Hodges on bass, and Steve Potts on drums. These soul legends have played with Al Green, Booker T. and the MG's, Aretha Franklin, Neil Young, and more; in other words, they don't seem like the kind of dudes who'd stand much tortured diva bullshit from some no-name white girl off Matador Records. These are first-rate professionals, and their contributions-- a far cry from those of Steve Shelley and Dirty Three, or even Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl-- add as much to the album as they detract.
The title song opens the album with the same halting, thick-fingered piano style Marshall has relied on since 2000's The Covers Record, but here it's swathed in Henry Mancini strings, teary delay effects, gently nudging drums, and Marshall's own multi-tracked voice echoing her lead vocals like Mary and Flo on the Supremes' loveliest ballads. "The Greatest", with its evocative lyrics of nostalgia and regret is, like "Colors and the Kids" and "Good Woman" before it, bleakness at its most pristine.
But Marshall doesn't wallow long, following the track with "Living Proof", Cat Power's most conventionally sexy song yet. As it swaggers on lazy horns and careening "Like a Rolling Stone" organ, you can almost picture Marshall in a pair of tight jeans, swinging her hips in front of a jukebox. "Lived in Bars" retains that Southern-fried sensuality in its back half: After beginning as a late-night smoky bar lament, the song lifts off on shoo-ba-doo harmonies and a bouncy beat; all of a sudden, it's getting hot and heavy in a pickup truck.
The marriage of Marshall's offbeat musical sensibility to her new backing band's in-the-pocket playing bears its most successful fruit on those three songs. At heart, they're smooth, accessible lite-R&B; tracks-- as close to Chan in Memphis as the album gets. Still, if that's what adult-alternative sounds like in 2006, sign me up for the AARP.
But the middle chunk of The Greatest just feels old. It's beyond "adult": These songs seem musty and outdated, like stuff my grandparents might have danced to during The War. "Could We", "Empty Shell", "Islands", and "After It All" are all finger snaps and jazz hands, Marshall twirling her umbrella in the park as Fred Astaire woos her with clicked heels and a top hat. "Thank you/ It was great/ Let's make/ Another date/ Real soon/ In the afternoon," Marshall purrs over call-and-response horns and hotel bar piano. "After It All" even features whistling and the kind of cabaret melody Nellie McKay drops into a song right before she threatens to kill you.
Worse is "Where Is My Love", the album's rock-bottom low. Marshall moans the title ad infinitum (interspersed with "bring him to me" and stuff about horses galloping and running free) in some sort of high school musical approximation of Nina Simone. She's accompanied only by Cheez Whiz piano scales and those same heart-tugging strings from "The Greatest", only this time they sound creepily manipulative, not heartbreaking or beautiful. I envision Marshall in a fluffy white gown with a plunging neckline singing this song out of a balcony window. At the end, a dove lands on her outstretched finger. This is not what I want from Cat Power. It's not what I want from anybody, not even Norah Jones.
The Greatest regains its composure as it nears the finish line, ending with a pair of songs that wouldn't have seemed out of place on any Cat Power album since What Would the Community Think. "Hate", the only track that might scare off newcomers while delighting her original fanbase, is Marshall alone with her guitar, playing stark, cutting riffs, and murmuring "I hate myself and I want to die." "Love and Communication" is the album's first three tracks as viewed through a fun-house mirror: Instead of the Memphis crew welcoming Marshall into their world, the closing track sees Marshall luring the studio vets down her dark, claustrophobic alley. The strings, horns, and organs press forward in deliberate staccato stabs, advancing on the ear as if programmed by Dr. Dre.
The biggest challenge of this album isn't going to be commercial success; just stick "Could We" on the soundtrack to a hip romantic comedy, and it'll take off on its own. The difficult part will be proving to longtime fans that Chan Marshall is the one in control here. She's made an album that, for the most part, is polished and accessible. For better or worse, she's stretched her musical horizons far beyond the close-knit indie rock world-- a world that likely doesn't want her to change.
