Home > Baltimore Music > CD Review > Cat Power, 'Jukebox'

Backstory: Well before Feist became the fashionable female troubadour du jour for both the NPR crowd and the iTunes generation, Cat Power’s Chan Marshall proved herself similarly palatable to a broad cross-section of music fans (and advertisers). Her smoky vocals charmed more traditional fans, while the cracks and imperfections in her recordings—along with her extremely erratic live performances—helped maintain her indie-rock cred.

Why you should care: Her first covers album, 2000’s aptly titled “Covers Record,” established Marshall as a formidable interpreter. She isn’t cowed into mere imitation when tackling the likes of Bob Dylan, James Brown and Joni Mitchell (as she does on “Jukebox”).

Verdict: Marshall’s voice is almost always worth the price of admission, and her backing band is unfailingly crisp; they’re called Dirty Delta Blues and include acclaimed Dirty Three drummer Jim White. But they succumb too often to the temptation of polished, pretty listlessness. Some poignant moments stand out, like her return to Hank Williams and a one-song stopover in her own back catalog (“Metal Heart”). Still, “Jukebox” feels like a relatively minor rest stop between albums of original material.
 
X-Factor: Twelve songs just won’t do? A limited-edition companion EP contains five additional covers in the same vein, including Nick Cave’s “Breathless” and Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You.”

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