Sun - Cat Power
Sun is Cat Power's new studio album, six years after the release of her last album of original material The Greatest. Chan Marshall spent three years in Malibu in her self-built studio, as well as Silver Boat, Miami's south beach studios and Paris. With a stark change from her Blues/Soul collaborative efforts, Sun presents a mix of electronica, haunting minimalistic guitar, heavy vocal effects and driving bass lines.
No two songs on this album sound the same, not even the song lengths correlate, some are as short as two minutes twenty seconds while the aptly titled Nothing but time featuring Iggy Pop singing alongside Marshall reaches a Pink Floyd worthy 10 minutes 50 seconds. As for the music itself you could easily draw similarities to 3,6,9 and Real Life which are upbeat, dance tracks. But Chan Marshall's lyrics are still deeply personal, from 3,6,9
"Abusive, a stranger in bed Elusive, forget everything you said/You got a right to have that hand on your arm/But the moment you hit it you're on your own".
This song is quick paced and upbeat, but the lyrics are about breaking out of a bad relationship, it makes for an easy to listen to, happy but introspective listen. Unfortunately for this song the chorus is the weaker part "3, 6, 9, you drink wine, Monkey on your back, you feel just fine" while catchy an upper vocal inflection Marshall's picked up somewhere along the road spoils the pace of the song.
Longtime fans of Cat Power may find this album a little hard to swallow at first listen. The huge changes in her musical and lyrical styles create an almost entirely different artist, the album is also rife with lyrical references, from Peace and Love opening with a Nina Simone line to Nothing But Time containing more than one Black Flag line. However this isn't childish referencing to Marshalls favorite bands, they fit perfectly with the theme of the songs even if it comes across a little as lazy songwriting or a gimmick. Definitely not her best album, but far from her worst.