Cat Power: Covers

For the third time, singer Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power) lends her gift as a song interpreter to a collection of covers drenched in delay and vocal overdubs. This outing ranges from Frank Ocean (“Bad Religion”) and the Replacements (“Here Comes a Regular”) to Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (“I Had a Dream, Joe”) and Lana Del Rey (“White Mustang”). Toss in the Pogues (“A Pair of Brown Eyes”), Billie Holiday (“I’ll Be Seeing You”) and Bob Seger (“Against the Wind”), and you get an eclectic mix. These songs—in shades of punk, folk, and blues—are sad, slow and sparse (her cover of Kitty Wells’ “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” simmers on just stand-up bass, finger snaps, and a lonely pedal steel). The album’s sole original, “Unhate,” first appeared on her acclaimed 2006 Memphis sessions, The Greatest. Now 50, Marshall emerged in the early ’90s alongside such inspiring indie-rock woman as Liz Phair, Hope Sandoval, and Juliana Hatfield. Her distinctive voice is raspy with a hint of a Southern lilt that belies her Atlanta roots. Her inventiveness packs an emotional punch, as on Iggy Pop’s elegiac “Endless Sea” and the sublime, folksy rendering of Jackson Browne’s chestnut “These Days.” Notably, there is an echo of defiance and resiliency throughout Covers, delivered by one of indie-rock’s most enduring female voices. 

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