Cat Power: Marshall Law

Sacrilege be damned: Cat Power's update of "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" gave the Hank Williams original a run for its money. Built more on straightforward melancholy than on high & lonesome sentimentality, the new version had enough poignance to make you want to soak in Cat Power's debut, Myra Lee (smells like records, 1996), start to finish. "I Can't Help It" blended heartbreak and ennui in a way that's devastating. It was also as point-blank as Cat Power got. Overall, Myra Lee simmered with uneasiness, its acoustic guitars and insistent country-bluesy rhythms masking something foreboding and opaque.

Now Cat Power have released their second disc, What Would the Community Think (Matador), and the puzzle continues. Unfortunately, the parts don't fit together so alluringly this time. Much of Myra Lee's impact came from its structure. Its undefined sense of doom was enclosed in melodies that pulled you in, even as the weariness in singer Chan ("Shawn") Marshall's voice threatened to push you away.

But that weariness is what ultimately swamps Community and sometimes even renders it unlistenable. Cat Power, an outfit that basically is Marshall (Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley and Tim Foljahn, from $2 Guitar, help out on Community), put a lot of stock in the innate appeal of Marshall's voice. And that's fine as long as she doesn't make too many demands on it. Her voice is a frail thing, forlorn and a little bit husky. In a song like "I Can't Help It," when she stuck to the plot and didn't bother to stretch syllables or raise the volume, the effect was lovely. Marshall has a vocal style that can express indifference and bitter hurt in the same breath. But too often on Community, she winds up either whining or sounding maddeningly detached.

The disc's instrumental sparseness doesn't help. Marshall's elliptical narratives work best when couched in solid melodies, when the music buoys her words. Much of this disc rambles, requiring the vocals to carry all the weight. In a club setting, where she usually performs solo with her guitar, Marshall's shy stage presence is said to get audiences to lean forward to listen, creating an unusual sense of intimacy. But on disc the lack of articulation merely detracts from the imagery -- after a while you might want to yank out your hair.

The odd thing about Community is that even at its sparest moments, when Marshall's voice is alone with the quiet strumming of a guitar, her delivery is usually blurry enough to be only half-intelligible. "In This Hole," for instance, is some kind of existential show of dread, no doubt. She mutters something about seeing someone asleep, "skull inside a book . . . eyes blackened by the sound and the thought of God." Her voice is so drab there's not even a trace of drollery in the line "Where would you like me to hang my head?"

The most profound moment on Community turns up on "They Tell Me," when languor doesn't seem like a pose. Against an unadorned walking-blues line, Marshall's voice is soft poetry. "They tell me what they do/I don't understand what they're talking about," she intones, humbly. "Maybe if I pray to the Lord above I'd get some sleep/But the Lord don't give a shit about me." When Marshall lays down concrete truths, Cat Power can be smashing.

-- Amy Finch

(Cat Power play upstairs at the Middle East next Friday, October 25, with Guv'ner and Bardo Pond.)