Artist: Cat Power
Album: The Greatest
Best of 2006
This week I am going through all the music I was able to hear this year, picking my favorites, and what I thought were the best albums of the year. There have been a few songs and artists I haven’t highlighted yet that I want to point out, and you can expect my top ten record of the year choices on Friday.
Falling just short of making my top ten is Cat Power’s “The Greatest,” her seventh album and my favorite from what I have heard of hers. Recorded in Memphis with a slew of legendary session musicians, “The Greatest” is a melancholy slice of southern soul filled with Cat Power’s (Chan Marshall) trademark diary lyrics and girly cooing vocals. This is no sad sack ride though, as may have been the case with some of her earlier work. It’s a very rich album that took me a few times to get into.
Many people are giving Bob Dylan’s “Modern Times” the top spot for album of the year yet I find “The Greatest,” which has a similar sound, to be much more enjoyable and interesting. The title track is a simple yet effective ballad about a would be prize fighter that reminds me of Brando’s Terry Malloy from “On The Waterfront.” The rest of the album is varied in tone, and a bit more upbeat.
With “The Greatest” Cat Power moved from indie darling to true contender.
Enjoy.
Harmony Korine, the writer of “Kids” and writer/director for the truly awful “Gummo” directed the funny, outrageous video for “Living Proof”:
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