Product Description

Cat Power's (Chan Marshall) disarmingly naive music hits you in the gut with its bare simplicity. Her hurt, vibrato-less tone is pure, velvety, and completely understated. In its simplicity, it seems to convey all the sadness of the world--like a leafless tree silhouetted against slate-gray sky heavy with rain clouds. Marshall accompanies herself on guitar,piano, or autoharp. Her arrangements are minimal--hypnotic,repetitive riffs with chords that barely change. When she hits a bass note, the impact is jarring. Cat Power's music issleep with all its troubled dreams.
On THE COVERS RECORD, Marshall explores the work of other songwriters. She deconstructs each song then reconstructs it as her own. Anyone familiar with Cat Power will be hard-pressed to tell the difference between these COVERS and Marshall's originals. "Satisfaction" is barely recognisable in its new, slowed-down version--the chorus is missing, and the lyrics take on Dylan-esque/surrealist proportions. Other covers include Velvet Underground's "I Found a Reason" and an autoharp setting of "Sea of Love". COVERS' retro/vintage, bare-boned, 21st century folk music puts you in mind of how such music must have been before the advent of recording, with songs changing form from one singer to the next.

Track Listing

1. Satisfaction
2. Kingsport Town
3. Devil's Daughter
4. Naked If I Want To
5. Swee Dee Dee
6. In This Hole
7. I Found A Reason
8. Wild Is The Wind
9. Red Apples
10. Paths Of Victory
11. Salty Dog
12. Sea Of Love

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13942 in Music
• Released on: 2000-03-20
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Slow-core minstrel Chan Marshall--a.k.a. Cat Power--will only take on someone else's tune if she thinks there's something she can add to it. Or, as in the case of The Covers Record, if there's something that can be subtracted. Indeed, Chan Marshall's fifth outing is perhaps her most stripped-down yet--an approach which, ironically, leads to some quite radical reworkings. Take, for example "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", which replaces the Rolling Stones' rollercoaster angst with a sepulchral but quietly graceful acoustic strum. Shorn of its chorus, it's barely recognisable as the same song, and it's all the more affecting for it. Elsewhere, Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground sidle up against Nina Simone and Smog. It's of some credit to Marshall's starkly beautiful vision that The Covers Record hangs together so perfectly. --Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

Smooth n' sultry
I arrived at Cat Power from her two tracks on the WKW soundtrack for 'My Blueberry Nights'. Inspired by what I heard I ordered her catalogue from Amazon. It is arriving in instalments and so this is my first 'full' experience of what Cat Power is all about. Having played the CD ten times since it arrived yesterday I can say with absolute clarity that this is a CD of great worth and utmost originality; a rare CD that actually contributes and shapes the greater musical consciousness - that is the antithesis to the majority of 'music' that either stalls progress or reverses it. And all this from an album of covers; singing the words of others. Amazing. The strength of this CD lies in three areas, firstly in the choice of her song selection, secondly obviously in her voice and thirdly in the desire the singer has to say something, to make a statement, to add her wash of colour over some pretty well-painted tunes. To follow up on the last point, what she succeeds in doing is essentially erasing that which went before and starting anew. Take for example track #1, the Rolling Stones' 'Satisfaction'. The idea of covering that is a pretty daunting one, how does one make it original, yet pay homage to one of the worlds' most listened to songs? an enigma of immense difficulties. Yet, what she has done is to take that song, and to make it her own, and dare I say it (as with other tracks), she has actually BETTERED the original. Bettered the original of 'Satisfaction'? - I would argue so. She has achieved the impossible. And she has achieved all this with a very sultry, down-tempo offering which would be easy to mistake for elevator music or filler if you weren't properly paying attention.

I would suggest that if you have arrived at this page, they you should not hesitate to buy this CD, I can't see how anyone with a genuine interest in either music - real music, or self-expressive musical artists, could not find this CD anything other than enthralling and enigmatically wondrous.

Personal favourites:
Track #1 (I can't get no) Satisfaction
Track #2 Kingsport Town

N.B. People often draw the mis-conclusions between Cat Power and Natalie Merchant or Feist. Whilst I love all three I think there are no real similarities, save the quirky female and the penchant for good ballads. Each one has their own style and should not be 'boxed' or compared.

Slowww... 'cos fast is too tricky
Hideous karaoke covers. If this lot turned up down yer local pub you'd chuck summat at 'em 'til they went away. Did no-one notice that the piano (and most of the other instruments) needed tuning? Or did they pay someone specially to un-tune it?

Note to band: just 'cos you play something slowly and out-of-tune doesn't make it mean more... Drabness and charisma are in no way equivalent...

Less Is More
Clearly of the Less Is More faith, Cat Power spent two years stripping back to nearly nothing this esoteric set of covers, exposing their bare essence and reinventing them as minimalist sound sculptures.

Getting the makeovers are songs associated with Bob Dylan (Kingsport Town, Paths Of Victory), the Rolling Stones (Satisfaction), Helen Merrill (Troubled Waters), Moby Grape (Naked If I Want To), Michael Hurley (Sweedeedee), Velvet Underground (I Found A Reason), Nina Simone (Wild Is The Wind), Smog (Red Apples), Mississippi John Hurt (Salty Dog - with extract of Candy Man), Phil Phillips and the Twi-Lights (Sea Of Love) and Chan Marshall (her alter-ego) on In This Hole.

Sublime.