With Kurt Cobain long since gone, there's been a real lack of the voice-of-our-generation talk that usually weighs down Rock Critic conversation. It calls to question if we'll ever see one again, with popular music being as vapid as ever and independent music lacking a human voice that isn't overwhelmed by gadgetry.
Cat Power, a Southern girl by the name of Chan Marshall, makes no lofty claims of being "The Voice," but in a perfect world she would be.
On her fourth CD, The Covers Record, Marshall chooses to reflect on the words of some of our "voices" of the past. I only say words because the music is, for the most part, all her own. Starting with a chorus-less cover of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," it's obvious that she's attempting to make these classics her stripped-down own as much as she can. The artists she chooses to cover make perfect sense for anyone who has heard Marshall's own brand of bipolar wistfulness. Covered artists include Bob Dylan, Michael Hurley, Velvet Underground, Moby Grape, Nina Simone — she even has the nerve to cover a song of her own, "In This Hole," and one from ex-boytoy Bill Callahan ("Red Apples").
For the uninitiated, The Covers Records will be a mixed bag. The productions here are simply one-offs and sound as if they were dares from friends laid down to tape after too few cups of coffee and too many cigarettes in the cold. It doesn't have the initial magic of 1999's Moon Pix, but it shouldn't; this CD is the definition of "alone," as it climaxes with her cover of VU's "I Found a Reason," 118 seconds of proof that vocals still can mean something amongst college radio's obsession with understatement. Is there magic here?
With nary a Steve Shelley or Dirty Three member to be found, Marshall has found herself as the only musician with the balls to make a cover album as a follow-up to her breakthrough record, and for maybe three-fourths of the tracks, she stays close to par with the originals. This won't knock your socks off, but take time and they'll fall off much more comfortably.
- John Meyerriecks
