Cat Power - Jukebox

there was some talk here:

Is anyone else looking forward to the new Cat Power?

but this should probably have its own thread, just providing a reference.

i think this album is very bad! i am almost ANGRY about how she chose to redo "metal heart". argh.

quite disappointing, i'd say. after the first cursory listens i like her unorthodox take on "new york, new york" and "i believe in you". but what is the point of that rather featureless version of "blue" at the end? hardly ever did a cover make me yearn for the real thing so much. i also get the impression that her voice has suffered from too much smoking already. like if it was dimmed down or something.

I keep seeing that Lincoln commercial with her covering Space Oddity - I really want to hear the full version of this.

Wow this thread is short. The version of Metal Heart is my favorite of the two. I hope she continues to record it every 15 years or so tbrr. Not only do I like the way she sings the cover version because she sounds resilient, but the changes in her voice are so striking that as a woman and a human being it's possible to hear the ravages of time. it's just super poignant to me, i guess. anyway, i have been listening to it over and over (not depressed, don't worry) and i wondered if ilm liked it but this thread is very short :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYpMGNfCwCc

my favorite song of hers, both ways, although i listen more to the jukebox version these days

it's totally crushing! i think that song belongs in the sad song singer's canon.

amazing song, probably my favorite of hers

love the Moon Pix version so much that I don't want to hear the Jukebox one, but y'all are making me think it might not be as bad as I was afraid of

oh you will enjoy it -- guaranteed
you can appreciate the sound of accumulated life experience
love the instrumentation too

it's like crazy horse metal heart

I listened to the Jukebox version first and far prefer it. I love it mostly for its huge bombast (for Cat Power anyway), and maybe that's why I don't hear the time-ravaged stuff -- it gets swallowed up by the quasi-Spector arrangements.

Also the "Space Oddity" over doesn't exist in full, the last I checked. ;_;

*cover

boo :(

slam dunk revive imo, love that version of metal heart!

sad zoos

feel bad for hating itt because these posts are nice but it does kinda sound like a teenager in a guitar shop has plugged in & is playing on top of this, huh

I don't think so but ymmv
For me it's more about the general feel rather than the quality of playing

yeah i feel you, it sounds nice. i just was so mad at her for playing with that blues band.

it was a good career move, i probably never would've heard her if The Greatest never came out

schlumpism

My ancient review, published: pretty rave-y, lots of modifiers, but still seems right:

Monday, March 10, 2008
The Record to Beat in '08
Cat Power's Jukebox.
I used to find her tiresome, but she's not
overplaying the waif card here, even though this probably her most
romantic album, her most truly atmospheric, because in order to have
an atmosphere, you gotta have gravity, from the right substance in the
spin. Every time the music starts, her voice first reaches me as a dry
ice smoke ring 'round the moon, over the shining spine of historee
(great and good old and newer songs coming together, and coming up in
just a minute) with a vivid poise that keeps her from sounding too
earnest: it's just the right, sensuous sound (especially as it moves
through her musical companions' reverb, echo and grooves) for her
cosmic quest, for romantic and spiritual fulfillment. ( Janis Joplin
answered, when asked what Today's Youth are looking for: "Sincerity,
and a good time." Hey hay hey.)
The confidence as well as
sensitivity—so of course "New York New York," with just a simple
adjustment of its seatbelt, should have this tensile lope and sway,
backbeating right past Radio City rinky-tink, with ingenue still in
tow/charge. She's totally at home with the Dirty Dozen Blues Band,
especially drummer Jim White, of the Dirty Three and recent,
noteworthy collabs with Nina Natashia; Judah Bauer of the Jon Spencer
Blues Explosion(! But he does not play no fratblooze here) is also
aboard (with Eric Papparozzi on bass and Greg Foreman's keyboards),
but this little combo is less like a blues band is usually expected to
be, more like rockers who have learned much from the Hi Rhythm
Section, in terms of taut, spare punctuation and momentum, fitting
Chan Marshall's vibrant reveries perfectly (the one time she holds
back a bit, seemingly getting lost, on "A Woman Left Lonely,"
Foreman's electric piano tremolo gets more emphatic, rallying her,
appropriately for a song about a woman who's coming back from
rejection).
The sequence of tracks is very effective: after "New York
New York," Hank Williams' "Ramblin Man" is recast as "Ramblin' Woman,"
and the original's melodramatic, spooked compulsion is tempered by a
certain expansiveness: she knows this kind of journey is where she's
meant to be, not that it doesn't matter who and what she finds. A new
version of her "Metal Heart" follows, with a confrontation, a note to
self and other, that steadfastness , mettle and "metal" is in the
sound, not heavy metal, but the electricity moving through natural
elements, 20th Century engine-uity revving up again in these old
songs, which sound as timely as ever.
The sleek, starlit,
meta-metal's also there in Lee Clayton's "Silver Stallion" which
practical-minded Cowgirl Chan leads from mythology or decoration, out
into her own prospects, and "Aretha" is wistfully, unpretentiously
invoked, to re-inspire her lover and herself, also (as repeated
listenings reward), I think of this as prefiguring later songs, as I
relate it to Dylan's line from Tarantuala, "Aretha, crystal jukebox
queen (the album's title from this?), I shall play you as my trump
card." I think of that because I know she'll reach Dylan's own "I
Believe In You," with Bauer accentuating the Stonesy riff with which
Dylan foresaw "Start Me Up," and White's drum leaps develop a hip hop
cast, kicking off the mud of a town through which one proud outcast
searches for another.
Marshall's own "Song For Bobby, " reminiscing
about various near-misses with the Master, could easily be gushy, but
she's even too grown-up for that now. She strikingly connects
Dylanesque phrasing to Billie Holiday's, on the latter's "Hush Now
(Don't Explain)," reminding me of D. 's description of his later songs
as "overlapping phrases on an electrical grid," the overlapping of
expression and reticence, austerity and warmth in the shadows. Which
is also where the hope and fear meet in, Jessie May Hemphill's "Lord
Help," just as "We're all reborn, to face the morning sun." Uh, and so
on, with some surprises: I didn't even recognize Joni Mitchell's
passive-aggressive self-pity/guilt-tripping you-dumped-me classic,
"Blue," at first, cos Chan doesn't imitate her at all! Not even in
this age of girly-swirly chamber folk, not at all (and the band's just
bumpin' at the walls of the break-up, you know it'll all work out as
it should or will). This girl is a woman now! (But not too scary with
it.)

I feel like some kind of reactionary, but the first Metal Heart sounds so unfiltered, so unselfconscious, it's riveting. The JB reworking sounds distanced and disengaged to me, like a "reading". I enjoyed quite a lot of Sun so am not against Chan's recent work, but that does nothing much for me.
If we're going to choose from among her covers, nothing can touch "I Found a Reason". Kills me every time.

I like both versions of Metal Heart, but what I love is how she continually reworks her material.
The version of The Greatest that opened the Sun shows was astonishing, turning it from a wistful sentiment to an indictment.

Fave cover? Come On In My Kitchen.

Oh I was thinking about Metal Heart yesterday! Weirdly I think what really helped me love both versions was this dubstep rmx (!!) which couldn't find space to exist on the sharper angles of the original I think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1sq0mhBRDY

Also I feel like it's good that MH has kinda settled as the default Cat Power song! It's pretty representative and pretty great.

I like LL's post, about being older, I hadn't thought much about that and it's true.