After over six years, Chan Marshall aka Cat Power has released a long anticipated follow up to 2006’s The Greatest, her last LP of all original material. Succinctly, it’s as bold a departure as that last release was to her previous work. And just as briefly, it’s as disappointing as The Greatest was outstanding. Marshall’s new direction synchs up only fitfully to her strengths as a performer. She seems to be straining against the bonds of her past achievements, but her search for growth has led her down some blind alleys on Sun.
To lean on a cliché, Chan Marshall has come a long way. The gradual progression she’s undertaken, moving from fascinating outsider with her records Dear Sir and Myra Lee to a major indie player with Moon Pix and You Are Free to an artist symbolic of the indie scene’s (and by extension, her own) staying power and propensity for exhibiting fulfilling maturity with The Greatest, a record that found her a new base of fans and without sacrificing the relationship she’d built with listeners through the previous decade.
The Greatest managed to pull off an impressive feat, sounding immediately classic (and only partly due to its Memphis soul outlook) without feeling a bit backdated, though as a woman with two covers albums under her belt she’s unusually adept at weaving the strands of old and new. And while 2000’s The Covers Record is more successful than 2008’s Jukebox, the latter made clear from its Warhol-esque cover to the contents of its grooves that she could return as an older, wiser musician to an earlier career concept and with a minimum of static in the execution.
Sun comes after a long break from recording, a hiatus where the artist engaged in a bunch of life’s ups and downs, with the biggest difference between hers and those of the average person reading this review being that Marshall’s were highly publicized as part of her growing celebrity. All of this doubtlessly impacted the sound and shape of Sun, a record markedly different from The Greatest, or for that matter any of her prior releases. It still certainly connects as a Cat Power record, only one that’s deliberately divergent from the accumulated strengths of her oft compelling oeuvre, ultimately a very problematic release and a major disappointment.
Opener “Cherokee” does successfully manage a standoff between the more organic sound of Cat Power’s past, with an especially strong piano line from her Dirty Delta Blues Band-mate and ex-Delta ’72 member Gregg Forman. It mingles fairly well with her quickly apparent desire to shake up her personal program via an approach integrating programmed beats and a general technoid ambiance, courtesy of Philippe Zdar of French electronica duo Cassius at the mixing desk.
If “Cherokee” is successful, it also features a troublesome sample of a hawk/falcon/eagle, a brief bit of sonic flavoring that can’t help coming dangerously close to an actual parody of songs that romanticize American Indians, though maybe it’s just Chan’s way of making it utterly plain that she doesn’t give the slightest of cares about what others might think is, well, corny. Either way the canned sound of that bird of flight is a harbinger for issues to come.
Like the title track which appears immediately thereafter. If “Cherokee” essentially split the difference between the organic and the electronic, “Sun” boldly tilts toward technology and provides the album with its first disappointing passage. To elaborate, in my ears Cat Power’s songs past were only intermittently great in the tried and true manner of the singer/songwriter. No, what made her best albums stand out for repeated listening was the sustained mood they managed to convey, the mood of a thorny, complex artist.
“Sun” is sadly emblematic of the album it names, an LP that makes obvious Marshall is straining against the perceived manacles of an accumulated body of work. This wouldn’t be a problem if she were headed into an interesting place ala The Greatest, which is the Cat Power record that makes the strongest claims for Marshall as a true exponent of the singer-songwriter tradition. If not leading the pack, she’s always been apart from it. Sadly, Sun plops her down in the midst of wide field demarked as Contemporary Indie-pop, Intelligent Female division.
“Ruin” is marginally better musically, beginning with another strong piano motif only to find it somewhat betrayed by overly polite Modern rock. Track three also stumbles into the, in this case, unfortunate direction of social relevance, or to put it a little more snidely the song with Something Important to Say. But its message is ultimately too trite to be considered preachy, which will be great if you find platitudes upon global strife and the spoiled privilege of the First World preferable to finger pointing (though Chan’s digit is notably pointed inward).
Yeah, “what are we doin’?/we’re sittin’ on a ruin” is highly unlikely to win any awards for poetics in lyrical affairs, but it’s also true that the song’s general lack of subtlety is deliberate, Marshall desiring her point to be clear. And if the music were stronger, the bluntness of this tactic wouldn’t feel like such a blatant deficiency.
“3, 6, 9” helps the album rebound somewhat, being Sun’s strongest cut since its opener. However, besides Marshall’s playground chant to alcohol addiction and another spiky little piano line (hopefully you’re sensing a theme, here) the song’s best element is a backing vocal that’s (surely coincidentally) remindful of Benjamin Britten’s “Cuckoo!”, notable from Wes Anderson’s recent film Moonrise Kingdom.
“Always on my Own” also works surprisingly well, largely due to is sparseness (much of Sun’s electronic veneer is too busy) and in the spacious quality of Marshall’s singing (much of Sun finds her cramming far too much wordplay into individual songs). But the cut also allows its rhythms to create a little tension that enters into a stalemate with the songs brevity; it’s the first track on the album that left me wanting more.
“Real Life” is plagued with the same problem as “Ruin,” finding Marshall relating insights on existence that are surely intended to connect with emotional import teeter but instead teeter on the brink of the banal. And that sampled birdcall from “Cherokee” begins to take on a deeper significance than just being a questionable idea in isolation.
It’s been stated that Sun’s sonic departure is related to an associate of Marshall’s describing the demos for this album as sounding too much like her prior work. Too bad she didn’t have someone close to her along the way that might’ve confided the harsh truth over many of Sun’s lyrics. Specifically, that while earnest and direct, they flirt too frequently with the hackneyed and even with the embarrassing.
As evidence, “Human Being” is a very average sounding ode to individualism and empowerment that would again surely benefit from stronger musical bedrock. The gist of this track’s problem seems located in uninspiring rhythms, both the lack of variance in the song’s synthetic snare line or the recurring rat-tat-tat pattern that hangs around like an over-employed exclamation point stressing Marshall’s drastic sonic departure. But the most startling aspect of “Human Being” is its abrupt fadeout, making me wonder how much of the tune’s actual recording was deemed unfit for inclusion.
Thankfully, “Manhattan” presents a real upswing in quality, combining a rigid beat-box rhythm with an almost minimalist keyboard line and finding Marshall in a relaxed, playful mode. And it is head and shoulders over anything that precedes it on Sun. Its cyclical concept avoids overstuffing the song (Sun’s problem with being too busy, again), and sadly “Manhattan” presents the road not taken.
The record’s path is exemplified by “Silent Machine” which coming directly after the LP’s strongest track feels like a real letdown, though it at least provides a sharp study in contrasts for where Sun goes wrong; there’s just too much happening on the latter, and none of it is executed particularly well, marrying what I recall Paula Cole sounding like to what’s perhaps a radio-lite version of Fiona Apple, and with some video-game derived battle sounds in the song’s mid-section.
But “Nothin but Time” finds the pendulum swinging back to the side of the good, and at nearly eleven minutes, the song is Sun’s longest stretch of high quality. And one more time (with feeling); a key ingredient is Foreman’s piano. As much of a kick as Iggy Pop’s guest spot does give, I can’t help thinking that a much better album could’ve been produced by Marshall, Forman, a four-track and some of the lower-tech electronic touches like “Manhattan”’s drum-box rhythm line.
Bummer that the clock-ticker has one more swing and to the bad. “Peace and Love” ends the album on quite the sour note. Please imagine a sketch-comedy goof on Patti Smith that finds her doing socially conscious rap-rock and you’re in the ballpark; it’s a horrid misstep that caps Sun as a record dominated by bad decision making. “Manhattan” and its penultimate track do make it obvious that Marshall still has talent to burn; it just seems clear that in trying to step out of the perceived shadow of her success, she’s undone so much of what made her such a fine musician in the first place.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C-
