A small gift for the twentieth anniversary: Cat Power releases Redux, a three-track EP marking the 2006 release of The Greatest. On one level, this follows a logic of catalogue exploitation. Whether her seventh studio album truly was the milestone – or whether that distinction belongs more properly to its predecessor You Are Free, with a little music history being gently bent here – is open to debate. You celebrate the anniversaries as they come. On another level, however, there is this quietly enchanting little EP.
»Try Me«, a cover of the James Brown classic, opens in familiar downcast fashion with piano, drums and Chan Marshall’s voice. Marshall replaces the original’s grooving intensity with an insistent melancholy. »Nothing Compares 2 U« provides a second cover, which the 54-year-old US songwriter likewise folds into her own sonic language. Everything feels earthier, heavier, more dragging. More hers. Firmly anchored in the cosmos of Cat Power.
Marshall treats »Could We«, the song from the acclaimed The Greatest, in much the same way. The original arrangement is barely recognisable. Redux captivates through its sound and makes clear just how far Marshall has evolved over these twenty years. This EP is not a retrospective. It is a preview. What finer gift could there be?
Redux
