Cat Power/ Chan Marshall- genius or fruitloop?

PR says it's self-produced

Mmm well cautiously excited for this one then.

as someone who generally doesn't notice these things, I have to say that the production on SUN was abominable. I listened to that album once and binned it.

philippe zdar was ~involved~ with the mixing/production

this really is a horrible thread title

in beth's defense, it was before the towers fell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8nU87OCrA

Match made in heaven. You are free comes to mind

Great addition to "songs in which a doctor gives advice/diagnosis."

Lana might as well not even be there.

relatable

Lana might as well not even be there.
otm

good song though, and production is good too (Moka)!

the backing vocals are subtle enough to have just been another backing vocal from chan - the lana name probably helps more than anything to bolster sales tbh

i'd rather the extra vocals be more on the subtle side than too bluntly thrown in; imo she definitely adds to it, although it'd be nice if she was in the video

the refrain becomes a bit much at the end but otherwise good song

good new song. excited for this album. I liked Sun well enough. I wish she'd released more albums and yes I think a bit part of her stature dropping was her not putting new original material out more often, also, she really did have a run of terrifyingly terrible live performances for a number of years there that sullied her reputation. I saw her with MIck and Jim touring for Moon PIx at a tiny club in Berkeley and she was great but ran off the stage the second she was done and didn't come back. The next four shows of hers I saw were erratic, unfinished, weird, scary. Then I didn't see her again for many years until recently opening for Nick Cave and she was so good solo in a huge outdoor venue with really not a lot of people listening to her. I'm glad she's doing better. She's very talented.

Really excited for the record.

I was wondering how many of the current crop of female singer songwriters she influenced; I hear her in van Etten, Waxahatchee, Angel Olsen for example.

i'd assume like 7/8 of them?
i'm playing a show with a cat power tribute next week -- the influence is kind of difficult to measure imo. it's not just the singing or songwriting (though it is that) it's even the act of speaking up and writing songs in the first place

she is super influential

let's all try to remember these nice things next time she says something we don't like about vaccines

Sadier has defended Jordan Peterson, being anti-vaxxers is small leagues.

xxp hope you'll post some of that show, LL, if feasible.
"Sexy bored housewife," also "bored housewife" (also just ["plain"{ "sexy"), don't seem like perjoratives to me, necessarily: somebody at loose ends, restless, can't won't anyway isn't satisfied, in an enclosed space, all her own and yet not--isolated anyway, on stage or off, in the biz and yet not, in some ways (not the standard antiquated production schedule). relatable Yes.

I liked Jukebox, and blogged this (it's chunky, look out)
posted 3.10.2008
The Record to Beat in '08
Cat Power's Jukebox. I used to find her tiresome, but she's not
overplaying the waif card here, even though this probably her most
romantic album, her most truly atmospheric, because in order to have
an atmosphere, you gotta have gravity, from the right substance in the
spin. Every time the music starts, her voice first reaches me as a dry
ice smoke ring 'round the moon, over the shining spine of historee
(great and good old and newer songs coming together, and coming up in
just a minute) with a vivid poise that keeps her from sounding too
earnest: it's just the right, sensuous sound (especially as it moves
through her musical companions' reverb, echo and grooves) for her
cosmic quest, for romantic and spiritual fulfillment. (Janis Joplin
answered, when asked what Today's Youth are looking for: "Sincerity,
and a good time." Hey hay hey.) The confidence as well as
sensitivity—so of course "New York New York," with just a simple
adjustment of its seatbelt, should have this tensile lope and sway,
backbeating right past Radio City rinky-tink, with ingenue still in
tow/charge. She's totally at home with the Dirty Dozen Blues Band,
especially drummer Jim White, of the Dirty Three and recent,
noteworthy collabs with Nina Natashia; Judah Bauer of the Jon Spencer
Blues Explosion(! But he does not play no fratblooze here) is also
aboard (with Eric Papparozzi on bass and Greg Foreman's keyboards),
but this little combo is less like a blues band is usually expected to
be, more like rockers who have learned much from the Hi Rhythm
Section, in terms of taut, spare punctuation and momentum, fitting
Chan Marshall's vibrant reveries perfectly (the one time she holds
back a bit, seemingly getting lost, on "A Woman Left Lonely,"
Foreman's electric piano tremolo gets more emphatic, rallying her,
appropriately for a song about a woman who's coming back from
rejection). The sequence of tracks is very effective: after "New York
New York," Hank Williams' "Ramblin Man" is recast as "Ramblin' Woman,"
and the original's melodramatic, spooked compulsion is tempered by a
certain expansiveness: she knows this kind of journey is where she's
meant to be, not that it doesn't matter who and what she finds. A new
version of her "Metal Heart" follows, with a confrontation, a note to
self and other, that steadfastness , mettle and "metal" is in the
sound, not heavy metal, but the electricity moving through natural
elements, 20th Century engine-uity revving up again in these old
songs, which sound as timely as ever. The sleek, starlit,
meta-metal's also there in Lee Clayton's "Silver Stallion" which
practical-minded Cowgirl Chan leads from mythology or decoration, out
into her own prospects, and "Aretha" is wistfully, unpretentiously
invoked, to re-inspire her lover and herself, also (as repeated
listenings reward), I think of this as prefiguring later songs, as I
relate it to Dylan's line from Tarantuala, "Aretha, crystal jukebox
queen (the album's title from this?), I shall play you as my trump
card." I think of that because I know she'll reach Dylan's own "I
Believe In You," with Bauer accentuating the Stonesy riff with which
Dylan foresaw "Start Me Up," and White's drum leaps develop a hip hop
cast, kicking off the mud of a town through which one proud outcast
searches for another. Marshall's own "Song For Bobby, " reminiscing
about various near-misses with the Master, could easily be gushy, but
she's even too grown-up for that now. She strikingly connects
Dylanesque phrasing to Billie Holiday's, on the latter's "Hush Now
(Don't Explain)," reminding me of D. 's description of his later songs
as "overlapping phrases on an electrical grid," the overlapping of
expression and reticence, austerity and warmth in the shadows. Which
is also where the hope and fear meet in, Jessie May Hemphill's "Lord
Help," just as "We're all reborn, to face the morning sun." Uh, and so
on, with some surprises: I didn't even recognize Joni Mitchell's
passive-aggressive self-pity/guilt-tripping you-dumped-me classic,
"Blue," at first, cos Chan doesn't imitate her at all! Not even in
this age of girly-swirly chamber folk, not at all (and the band's just
bumpin' at the walls of the break-up, you know it'll all work out as
it should or will). This girl is a woman now! (But not too scary with
it.)

Also liked Sun.

Cat Power and Grouper are always linked in my mind, even if Harris was never a Cat Power fan. their chords, their voices (to an extent), the intense melancholy and despair.

I’m not a huge fan of the chorus (gets a bit repetitive) and Lana’s feat is a bit useless? Doesn’t sound much different from the usual Cat Power overdubs / backing vocals... if I hadn’t known it was Lana I wouldn’t have known... hell i still don’t hear it.

That said this is well produced which was my main fear and has some bite to it which was missing in her most recent albums so I’m lookibg forward to hearing the rest.

That outro just melts me.

The Rihanna cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Tsk-cPXxI

it's a very natural cover for her

i hate the title of this thread

^^

The title of this thread always makes me smile. Cat Power usually doesn't, so in the end I find the title really perfect.

if it were me being described, i would much prefer "fruitloop" to "sexy bored housewife"

her arrangement of "stay" is interesting. it's like she just chose her favorite parts/lines to sing and forgot about the rest.

Like she did with "Wonderwall"?

and "Satisfaction"

yeah i guess that is her thing
i like it
it's definitely her own

OK maybe her stuff doesn’t always work or the risks backfire instead of paying off - but seeing her raw alchemy like that, who could doubt she’s a genius, with all the baggage that often entails?

I usually roll my eyes at acoustic covers of pop hits but her voice, her delivery, and the way she picks the song apart and saves only a few verses from it totally sells it to me. I need to dig out The Covers Record, haven't listened to it in years, but I remember loving many tracks from that one.

the covers record was excellent. jukebox I didn't like as much.

I actually prefer Jukebox!

When doing covers she usually only keeps the low key parts like the verses... I feel like she’s insecure of her range or she just isn’t fond of big choruses.

Sea of love is so nice

Weird because the Jukebox version of "Metal Heart" has a humongous chorus.

On her cover of the VU's "I Found A Reason" she omits the verses and just does the chorus(x2) as the verse and then turns the coda into a chorus.

It's nice but I'm a much bigger fan of 'guitar Cat Power' than 'piano Cat Power.'

what's funny about that song is that I was more familiar with her version than theirs because I'd never picked up Loaded at the time. Then years later when I heard the VU version I couldn't place where I knew the song from.

I can't say I like the Rihanna cover much -- it's not too different from the original, which for me has a more spectral quality. This one by comparison is more tepid.

i watched this earlier without knowing it was a rhianna cover. i vaguely recognised it and somehow concluded it was a fleetwood mac song.

i liked low's cover better and it was a pretty straight-ahead cover iirc

but cat power's is definitely hers

Oh my, that Funny or Die video posted upthread is pretty much exactly like the one Cat Power live show that I saw.
Every time I see this thread title, i think the answer is: Yes.

NYT profile:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/arts/music/cat-power-wanderer.html

Interesting tidbits about her breakup with Matador.

Rob Schnapf, a producer for Elliott Smith who mixed “Wanderer” and engineered some recording sessions, said that Ms. Marshall knew “she did not want to make a big record — she absolutely did not.” He recalled moments of inspiration in the studio where the spirit would hit her: “Her eyes would roll back and she’d just channel and go,” he said. “You can’t make that happen. Either you’ve got the genie in the bottle, or you’ve just got the bottle.”

But Matador rejected the album.

“They said, do it again, do it over,” Ms. Marshall explained. (Mr. Slater confirmed that Matador told him “Wanderer” was “not good enough, not strong enough to put out.” The album will be released by Domino.)

Ms. Marshall said she’d received the same mandate from Matador during recording as she had for “Sun,” her previous album from 2012. “It was like, ‘We need hits!’” she said. “And I did it — I got Top 10. I did the best I could to give them hits” on “Sun,” using bright synths and more modern sounds. (“Sun” has sold 114,000 albums to date including streams, according to Nielsen.)

But to Ms. Marshall, the label had always represented artistic freedom. “Looking back, I know they were using me,” she said, recalling a Matador executive playing her an album by Adele and telling her that that was how a record was supposed to sound. “I understood that I was a product,” she said, “and I always thought I was a person.”

Matador said in a statement: “Chan Marshall is without question one of the most talented, brilliant artists we’ve been fortunate to know,” adding: “Our working relationship with Chan has not been without difficult moments. We’ve had disagreements over matters both artistic and business, but none of that changes our respect for her as a person or performer.”

Ms. Marshall said she did not alter the music after the label change, but did add a track: “Woman,” featuring Lana Del Rey, which in many ways became the defiant, upbeat centerpiece of an understated album, beginning with a folky, pointed lament:

If I had a dime for every time
You tell me I’m not what you need
If I had a quarter I would pull it together
And I would take it to the bank and then leave

Asked if the track, which has received more than a million YouTube views in a month, was a middle finger to her ex-label, Ms. Marshall demurred: “Thank you for asking, but no comment.”

She did, however, compare some indie-rock circles to a fraternity, with little space for a lone woman without a band or a manager. “I had to fight a lot for little stupid things, but I just thought, ‘That’s what I do,’” she said. “Pavement’s going to the Bahamas or something with the label, Interpol is going to St. Lucia or wherever with the label. I remember yelling: ‘Can you take me out to dinner? I’d love to go to a fancy place!’”

a Matador executive playing her an album by Adele and telling her that that was how a record was supposed to sound

wow!