release date: Mar. 21, 2000
format: digital (12 x File, MP3)
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,18]
producer: non-produced
label: Matador - nationality: USA
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, đRolling Stone 3 / 5 stars ]
