Cat Power "The Covers Record" (2000)

The Covers Record

release date: Mar. 21, 2000

format: digital (12 x File, MP3)

[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,18]

producer: non-produced

label: Matador - nationality: USA

Track highlights: 1. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" - 7. "I Found a Reason" - 12. "Sea of Love"

5th studio album by Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall [pronounced 'shawn], aka Charlyn Marie Marshall) following 1½ years after the album Moon Pix (1998), which is cited by many as her first significant studio album.

The Covers Records is, to no surprise, a collection of covers by many diverse artists. You'll find tracks by famous artists such as the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and the Velvet Underground, tracks made famous by Nina Simone and Mae West, and there are tracks by (to most) more unknown names such as Phil Phillips, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Michael Hurley. There's also room for a reinterpretation of Cat Power's own track "In This Hole", previously released on What Would the Community Think, Power's third album and Marshall's first on Matador released in '96 while Power was still associated with the name of Chan Marshall's band, although in practice she had already gone solo here.

The album is entirely acoustic and stripped down to a minimal of instrumentation and most probably also recorded on a single recording track with only Chan Marshall singing and playing guitar. On some tracks, it's her piano that is only accompaniment, and only on "Salty Dog" the participation of guitarist Matt Sweeney is heard. Typically, for Cat Power, no producer is indicated on the album, and in this case it's probably only sound engineers who have set up microphones and then started and finished the recording.

It's restrained to lo-fi regardless the original arrangements and therefore most tracks fall quite far from their original expression. It's Chan Marshall solo, and it's heartfelt, but maybe also a bit one-sided - at least for my liking. The album garnered some good reviews, but it's not among my favourites. Admittedly, Marshall has an insistent melodic vocal and sings with great emotion, making all the songs her own. For me, the problem is that the tracks slide (too much) into each other and end up sounding one-stringed, and she's just not an instrumentalist virtouso or (for that matter) a singer with a big register. If you're not familiar with Cat Power, I will recommend listening to her predecessor, Moon Pix or the successor You Are Free (2003), which may be regarded as her commercial breakthrough.

[ allmusic.com, NME, Spin 3,5 / 5, The Guardian 4 / 5, 👍Rolling Stone 3 / 5 stars ]

Blanck Mass "In Ferneaux" (2021)

In Ferneaux

release date: Feb. 26, 2021

format: digital (2 x File, FLAC - SBR267digital)

[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,56]

producer: Blanck Mass

label: Sacred Bones - nationality: England, UK

Track highlights: 1. "Phase I" - 2. "Phase II" - 3. "Starstuff (Single Edit)" (bonus track)

5th studio album by one-man project Blanck Mass follows 1½ years after Animated Violence Mild (Aug. 2019) (the album is released on bandcamp).

Compared to all other albums credited Blanck Mass this one is of another construct, so to say. All other previous albums contain various different compositions - most of which are of 'normal' running times going from 2 to 10 minutes, however, this contains two tracks only that basically are one composition split in two to fit traditional vinyl releases. "Phase I" has a running time just above 21 minutes and the "Phase II" a running time just below 20 minutes, but when played as digital files it's clear they appear seamless parts of the same composition - the digital album comes with a third 'bonus track': "Starstuff (Single edit)", which in essence is an edited outtake of the first part of "Phase I".

Musically, this has turned out as more complex, with greater variation, which implies both ambient moments, and bits of almost extreme white noise - and everything in between.

My initial verdict had me think of In Ferneaux ['Inferno'] as a step back and to what could sound like a minor work, but after having played it over several times, I kinda like the result, although, it's still a complex and somewhat experimental release that also bridges his more progressive work released under the moniker Fuck Buttons together with Andrew Hung and that of his solo music as Blanck Mass. In some ways because this is both more ambient and experimental in the way Fuck Buttons has styled their albums, and to some extent more upfront and 'hard', and yet, progressive bits, here and there, could point to inspiration in early techno days.

[ allmusic.com 4 / 5, 👍Pitchfork 7 / 10 stars ]

Robert Forster "The Evangelist" (2008)

The Evangelist

release date: Apr. 21, 2008

format: cd

[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,78]

producer: Mark Wallis & Dave Ruffy

label: Tuition - nationality: Australia

Track highlights: 1. "If It Rains" - 2. "Demon Days" (solo live) - 3. "Pandanus" - 4. "Did She Overtake You" - 5. "The Evangelist" - 6. "Let Your Light in, Babe" - 9. "It Ain't Easy" - 10. "From Ghost Town"

5th studio album by Robert Forster is his follow-up to Warm Nights (Sep. 1996) and thus released a full 12 years after his most recent solo album - and there are a various reasons to that [see The Friends of Rachel Worth, album #7 by The Go-Betweens], which among others things involves the re-formation of The Go-Betweens in '99 and, in particular, the sudden death of Forster's musical friend, Grant McLennan, May 2006. The two songwriters had begun work on what should have been the band's tenth album together, and three of these are included here - as tracks #2, #6, and #9. One year following McLennan's death, Forster resumed his solo career with a series of concerts featuring Adele Pickvance and Glenn Thompson, and in the autumn of 2007 the trio returned to the same studio in London where they had recorded the band's final Oceans Apart (2005) in company of McLennan and producers Wallis and Ruffy, now to record this very album.

Musically, it doesn't fall far from the band's final outing, and in Forster's solo discography it's perhaps a little cleaner than most his other albums, although lyrically it naturally includes the grief over his painful loss. The album also stands a bit on its own in that it contains much of the soul and colours of The Go-Betweens and in that way positions itself somewhere in between Forster solo and the band, which also was put to rest with the passing of McLennan. And by containing tracks written for the band, it's bound to be very special. Nearly all Forster's solo albums have a certain unfinished quality to them, but The Evangelist appears quite elaborated as a whole, and together with his solo debut Danger in the Past (1990) this clearly stands as one of his best. Then is it even Forster's best solo? And yes, I think it is - and then it's probably his only solo album, which was partly made with the help of McLennan.

Highly recommended.

[ allmusic.com, Q Magazine, Slant 4 / 5, 👍Pitchfork 7,6 / 10, Uncut 5 / 5, The Guardian 3 / 5 stars ]

Ane Brun "A Temporary Dive" (2005)

A Temporary Dive

release date: Feb. 7, 2005

format: cd

[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,92]

producer: Katharina Nuttall & Ane Brun

label: DetErMine Records / V2 - nationality: Norway

Track highlights: 1. "To Let Myself Go" - 2. "Rubber & Soul" - 3. "Balloon Ranger" (Remix version) - 4. "My Lover Will Go" (4 / 5) - 5. "A Temporary Dive" (5 / 5) - 6. "Laid in Earth" - 8. "Where Friend Rhymes With End" - 9. "The Fight Song"

2nd studio album by Ane Brun released nearly two years after her fine debut Spending Time With Morgan from Feb. 2003, is once again a collection of songs solely written and composed by Brun herself, albeit with a single cover, "Lady in Earth" by Henry Purcell.

With the album, Ane Brun fulfills her great potential and gives us an even stronger personal collection of songs that is not only based on an American singer / songwriter tradition but is shaped by Brun's very own expression. It's a huge conglomerate borrowing from older European folk traditions rooted in the Middle Ages and in Nordic ballads and then mixed with folk rock and baroque pop, and in this mix, something new arises - something that would later be named 'neo folk'. The string arrangements are generally turned down, and they're only present on a few tracks, while several songs are only arranged with accompanying acoustic guitar. The title track isn't the only great composition here - in fact, it's hard to point to songs that shouldn't be highlighted as featured songs. It's both an enormously varied and coherent album at the same time. The variation comes in the dosage of an almost locked in emotional expression, where Brun sings painfully and sincerely, and then on the other hand, the individual songs also take form as light-hearted humorous comments. The overall impression is a very strict whole because the instrumentation is nevertheless narrow and seemingly hand-picked or the songs have been cut down to a minimum of accompanying instruments - it's always the acoustic that carries the tracks with Ane Brun's characteristic vibrato and her strumming guitar, which ties it all together ever so nicely.

A Temporary Dive is a nice Nordic release with an international sound and then it's also an album that places Norway at the artistic top, not just in Scandinavia, but in modern popular music.

Highly recommended.

Toyah "The Changeling" (1982)

The Changeling
release date: Jun. 30, 1982
format: digital (1999 reissue)
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,12]
producer: Steve Lillywhite
label: Connoisseur Collection - nationality: England, UK

Track highlights: 1. "Creepy Room" - 2. "Street Creature" (tv performance) - 5. "Angel and Me" - 7. "Life in the Trees" - 8. "Dawn Chorus" - 10. "Brave New World"

4th studio album by Toyah following the band's most successful album Anthem (1981) and now together with one of rock music's new star producers, Steve Lillywhite, who had only just worked with XTC, Peter Gabriel, Thompson Twins, and U2. Originally released on Safari Records, the album contains ten songs nearly all written and composed by Toyah Wilcox and Joel Bogen - with one track co-written with bassist Phil Spalding. The '99 Enhanced CD edition contains an additional six tracks. As an almost entirely natural development, the band's line-up has changed once more in two positions: keyboardist Adrian Lee and drummer Nigel Glockler, who both only appeared on the '81 album are here replaced by Andy Clark and Simon Phillips, respectively.

Stylistically, it's as if the band is trying hard to stay on the same musical path with its own mix of orchestrated new wave and art pop combo, which at the same time appears to lend from 1970s symphonic rock and progressive rock with a more contemporary uptempo smartness. With this, Toyah produced another top-10 album and the band's second-highest charting album, peaking at No. #6 on the national albums chart, and the only single from the album, "Brave New World" peaked at No. #21.

Although the artistic distance from the band's most recent album is quite small, The Changeling still sounds more like a collection of outtakes from the stronger album, and at the same time you may assume that the success of the '81 release also has had something to do with the good sales figures with which the album was met here, because The Changeling as such, didn't produce any notable hits. Both lyrics and music deal with the mysterious and a fantasy world, which is suggested by the front cover. On the songs, Wilcox narrates about "Gladiators", "War", "Warriors", "Breaking free", "New destinations", " Mysterious world", etc. - something that she should cling to on the successor - and she hangs on to topics related to the future and science - and not really about alienation (as contemporaries like Siouxsie & the Banshees or Nina Hagen), but more like a kind of welcoming towards the new and unknown, and in that way you could point out that in relation to the trends, Toyah went her own way.

The band tries hard to produce a worthy sequel to their fine Anthem but ultimately fails to repeat the success - perhaps because the attempt appears too obvious. The formula and the style are more or less from the same area but the songs are not, and it's reasonable to ask if this album really deserves a reissue edition with six bonus tracks.

Not recommended.