Good Weather For Airstrikes

I admit that I am not the greatest fan of Cat Power, though there are definitely a few songs here or there (most notably “Names”, from You Are Free) that I’ve enjoyed. Once I heard the leaked lead single and title track from her just-released new album, however, I was properly intrigued and vowed to make an effort to listen to the whole thing. Well, I’ve made good on that vow and given The Greatest a chance, and I’m glad I did. Immediately memorable is the aforementioned lead single/title track/first song, “The Greatest”, which is a remarkable song in which Chan Marshall refuses to have her strong lyrics and vocals overshadowed by a truly heartrending piano-and-strings arrangement. A strong case could be made that this album is worth the purchase price for this song alone, but it is hardly the only good song on The Greatest. The sparse ballad “Where Is My Love” showcases Marshall’s stunning voice on top of a mellow background, a striking centerpiece to the album [note: Pitchfork completely disagrees with me here]. Another excellent song is “Lived In Bars”, which features saxophone and other jazz staples in the background to the gorgeous chorus. As a whole, the song is very reminiscent of “The Greatest”, indeed one of the only drawbacks to this album is the similarities between a lot of the songs. Marshall tries gamely to vary the arrangements and the affect in her voice, and to a degree she succeeds in keeping the album interesting. The big story behind this album is that it was recorded in Memphis and the backup musicians are renowned bluesy session players, which is enough to build intrigue and definitely affect (mostly in a positive fashion) the songs on this album. Overall, however, The Greatest is not a challenging album; its consistency falls just short of being a fault. “The Greatest” is, without irony, the greatest song on an album that across the board is simply, ‘good’.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.