If I Could Stand to Be Less Difficult
Note three points from the post immediately below this one:
01. "Ruin" and "Cherokee," the two
Sun tracks most widely available in advance of the album's release, were not featured on my list. This is partly, of course, because they are not among my 10 favorite Cat Power songs. I like both of the new tracks just fine, but I'm not sure they'd rank if I'd expanded the list to 20 or 25 songs. That said, I also excluded them because I wanted to wait and hear how they sounded in the context of the full record. Aside from the stray exception--"He War" might be the only clear case; "Cross Bones Style" is arguable, but I'd contend that it's essentially a particularly catchy album track that fits nicely where it's sequenced on
Moon Pix-- Marshall is an album artist. Not in a high-concept way, but in a kind of old-school singer-songwriter sense. Her best albums are less about the individual songs and more about
moments within said songs that cohere into something seamless (but not formless), to the point that one may sometimes forget which specific track contained some specific, sublime moment. (This aspect of Marshall's music may seem to render an exercise in ranking her best songs, as I've attempted below, a rather counter-productive effort, but I have tried to emphasize the moments that stand out in those songs.) What I did not, however, anticipate in excluding "Ruin" and "Cherokee" from my list was that they would be, by a fairly significant margin, the two best tracks on
Sun. After a dozen-plus listens to the new album, those two remain the only songs that I feel particularly compelled to replay after they finish. This is a problem for two reasons: First, and most obviously, because, while both songs are good, they are not "Nude as the News"-good or "Say"-good or "Fool"-good. But also because, in wanting to replay "Cherokee" and "Ruin," I am reflexively acknowledging that tracks which proceed them, immediately or for the duration of the record, are not just inferior, but perhaps more importantly, do not hang together all that well or compliment one another the way most or all of the songs on her best albums do.
02. I began the earlier post by asserting that "Chan Marshall is one of the great artists of the past two decades." I did not claim that Marshall was one of the great lyricists of that period. While she has always had a knack for the cryptic-poignant line that catches your attention and sticks in your head (say, "all the hearts that touch your cheek / how they jump, they move, they embarrass"), her songs inevitably sound better on record than they read on the page--as well they should. I'm hardly one to deny aural pleasures on the grounds of less than literary language. Much of the writing on
Sun, however, is on-the-nose to the point of getting in the way of such pleasures. Sample offenders: "three, six, nine / you drink wine / monkey on your back, you feel just fine"; "you're a human being / you gotta right to scream when they don't want you to speak / you gotta right to be whatcha want and where you wanna be" (the spelling choices come courtesy of Marshall or Matador or whoever had the hubris to include a fold-out poster lyric sheet with the CD); or basically all of album-ender
"Peace & Love." It also doesn't help that Marshall's greatest asset, her voice, is needlessly overproduced in places, while at other times, her vocals get lost amidst the sonics. Speaking of which, for all the buzz/trepidation concerning Marshall's digital move, the production on
Sun feels rather banal, like so much twenty-first century adult-contemporary pop, more often than it registers as inspired or "something new" in an exciting or challenging way.
03. In my entry for "Lived in Bars," I admitted that "I was one of those annoying Cat Power purists who found it easy to like yet hard to love
The Greatest--a reaction I'm already readying myself against in advance of
Sun." Apparently, not well enough! Which is to say, following the criticisms posited above, that the problem(s) here may lie as much with this long-time fan as with the artist herself. The new record is actually pretty good. I keep wanting to listen to it and each time I do, I find something new to like: the guitar line on "Ruin" is jagged and sharp, clean and cool yet vaguely menacing, like the guitars on some of my favorite Talking Heads songs, and Chan rides its groove impeccably; "Silent Machine" largely delivers on the hype of Cat Power 2.0--or is it 3.0?--with legitimately interesting sonic flourishes that feel well-coupled to some of Marshall's stronger
Sun material, words-wise; even the Iggy Pop cameo on "Nothin' but Time" has grown on me. The title of that last track, though, can't help but recall "American Flag," the Beastie Boys-sampling (who said CP 1.0 was hopelessly austere?) opener from
Moon Pix. Alas, I'm living in the past, while Marshall is fumbling toward something like the future. I guess I can relate a little bit to "Charles" from "Names": I said I was in love with her. We were both fourteen. Then she had to move away. Then I began to smoke crack. (Okay, so it's not a perfect analogy.)
