Tír Na HiFi

Not everbody's cup of tea but this album sounds better the more I listen. Great live show also

Utterly remarkable music that keeps pulling me back under its spell.  Some of the purest and most sincere music I have ever heard, the expression of which is a testament to the sheer force of will that drove this woman to change her life utterly and realise her hopes and dreams into these songs, which burn with a spiritual intensity that resonates deeply and profoundly within me everytime I listen.  After eight or so years of listening to this music, it is the delicacy and fragility of the vocal phrasing that I listen to, which expands upon the song lyrics and communicates with great urgency the very personal anguish that haunts these songs which run the emotional gamut from joyful hope to passive nihilism.  She never had to raise her voice to break your heart.  There is perfection in her songwriting art (which in itself was entirely self-taught and one that was feverishly driven by dreams of redemption)  but it was a hard-won perfection that she paid for dearly.  Remarkable, just remarkable music which continues to intensify in power with every passing listen.

Listening to Cat Power's most recent album, Sun this afternoon.  My overriding impression of this album  is just how compulsive and immediate and vibrantly alive this sounds.  This album represents a profound change of direction sonically for Chan Marshall which was just as she intended.  Recorded over a period of 5 years where she actively searched for a new way of presenting her songs, it is her most personal album.  Synthesisers and drum machines play a prominent role and, whlilst this does alter the sonic texture of what you might expect from a Cat Power album, the emotional vitality that you expect remains undiluted.  (It's worth bearing in mind that, despite the smooth Memphis soul that The Greatest was drenched in, it was a remarkably downbeat album.)  What Sun represents for Marshall is a kind of creative rebirth, perhaps represented best by its beautiful cover, depicting Marshall, hair newly shorn, looking blearily out at us as a rainbow is reflected against her weary features.  The calm after the emotional turmoil of her many storms.  

Marshall wrote a great deal of music during the 5 years of preparation for Sun but discarded many of these songs because, in her opinion, they reflected the pain and trauma of the old Cat Power, and she wanted to make a concerted attempt to avoid covering old ground and look to the future.  The bravery of her approach to song selection on Sun was highlighted when she sang one of the excluded numbers, the exquisuitely bruised Bully, on the accompanying promotional tours.  There remains on Sun an acknowledgement of her emotional scars but she never dwells on these and prefers to look to the future.  

This is an album which I am sure holds great therapeutic value for her.   Undoubtedly, the perfect example of this is the emotional centrepiece, Nothin' But Time, ostensibly written about the daughter of a former boyfriend, but she may just as well be referring to herself.

"I see you kid, alone in your room, 
you got the weight on your mind, and you're just trying to get by
your world is just beginning
and I know this life seems never-ending
but you got nothin' but time and 
it ain't got nothin' on you."

Extremely straightforward lyrics, bordering on simplistic, allied to drone-rock influenced metronomic drumbeats and a repeating synthesiser line, produce something akin to Heroes-era Bowie, given added intensity when Iggy Pop starts to add his inimitable drawilng backing vocals about five minutes into the song.  The impression on repeated listening is a mantra-like sense of spiritual intensity, which derives its inexorable power from the repetitive structure of the unchanging drum beats and the chants of "You wanna live your way of living" which gradually coalesces into "You've got nothin' but time and it ain't got nothing on you".

The great thing about all of Marshall's songs, no matter how depressing they may be, is that they always contain simmering undercurrents of a sense of struggle to persist and endure with this life.  There is never any sense of a nihilistic wading in emotional depths, or simply letting go.  She is always struggling for a lifeline.  This charges her songs with a profound sense of reverence for life, of preserving one's dignity and self-respect in the face of what seems to be insurmountable adversity.  And, when she communicates this struggle with her dusky, soulful, bruised animal of a voice, you have something of great depth that touches you on a deeply emotional level.  The achievement of the Sun album is entirely personal in that you hear her actively pushing herself to endure, to keep singng her songs, and to keep working towards that oasis of calm.  Not just her bravest work but her most hopeful one, this is a wonderful album that demands and repays repeated listenings.  A very special artist.

One of the many compilations I picked up second hand when my world was young and full of the joys of discovery.....

Brilliant notes and a terrific selection too. It gets off to a great start with Are You Experienced :) But no Red House!!!!



On Polydor double vinyl.....




Tracklist:
A1 Are You Experienced? 4:07
A2 Third Stone From The Sun 6:37
A3 Purple Haze 2:47
A4 Little Wing 2:24
A5 If 6 Was 9 5:32

B1 Bold As Love 4:08
B2 Little Miss Lover 2:20
B3 Castles Made Of Sand 2:45
B4 Gypsy Eyes 3:39
B5 Burning Of The Midnight Lamp 3:35
B6 Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) 5:08

C1 Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland) 2:09
C2 Still Raining, Still Dreaming 4:22
C3 House Burning Down 4:30
C4 All Along The Watchtower
3:57
C5 Room Full Of Mirrors 3:16
C6 Izabella 2:49

D1 Freedom 3:23
D2 Dolly Dagger 4:40
D3 Stepping Stone 4:06
D4 Drifting 3:45
D5 Ezy Rider 4:05

Design [Sleeve] – John Pasche

A nice way to remember Jack.....

cybot wrote:A nice way to remember Jack.....

Sad news indeed Dermot, thanks for the clip