Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Cat Power (Chan Marshall) passed this way with The Covers Record (2000), Jukebox and the Dark End of the Street EP (both 08).
Here she again repurposes others' diverse material: Frank Ocean's dramatically holy Bad Religion into downbeat electro-folk; Nick Cave's menacing I Had a Dream Joe throbbing with constrained tension; Kitty Wells' country classic It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels becomes noir dream-pop with pedal steel, her own Hate becomes the similarly downplayed Unhate, a respectfully soulful version of the lovely Forties ballad I'll Be Seeing You and, to much lesser effect, the Pogues' A Pair of Brown Eyes.
Cover albums are often career digressions, but for Power they've been important personal stops on her journey.
However here she doesn't offer great range or expression in interpretations which frequently render the songs anodyne.
You can hear this album at Spotify here.
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