After establishing herself on the 2007 Matador-released album THE GREATEST as the indie world's answer to Norah Jones, Cat Power's Chan Marshall returned to the format of 2000's THE COVERS ALBUM for JUKEBOX, tackling tracks made famous by Hank Williams ("Ramblin' (Wo)man"), Bob Dylan ("I Believe in You"), James Brown ("Lost Someone"), and Frank Sinatra ("New York"), among many others. Marshall proved herself a unique interpreter on THE COVERS ALBUM, deftly folding a diverse set of songs into her own dark, dreamy sonic world. She expertly stays the course on JUKEBOX, sublimating the masculine bravado of songs by these artists into her own muscular yet decidedly feminine musical template.
JUKEBOX contains only one new Cat Power composition ("Song to Bobby"), but the many facets of Marshall are on full display here. And though the soul influence of THE GREATEST appears only fleetingly, it makes for what is perhaps the album's best performance, "Woman Left Lonely," a song written by Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham and made famous by Janis Joplin. The track finds Marshall offering her audience, as she did on THE GREATEST, a glimpse of her raw vulnerability stripped bare of any arty concessions to the tortured psyche by which she defined herself for so many years.
- Released: 08/09/2011
- Format: Vinyl
- Genre: Pop
