Album Review: Cat Power - "Dark End of the Street" (2009)

I really like Cat Power. She’s sampled quite a few styles over the course of her career — ranging from indie to noise rock to melancholic cover songs. But she seems to really like the cover songs — perhaps a bit too much, even. Her first album of cover tunes, aptly titled The Covers Record, was a masterpiece; Satisfaction and Sea of Love, amongst others, were given new life. After an album of new material, she put out another cover record, called Jukebox, which was good but largely disappointing and fairly uninspired in comparison to the earlier disc. The brilliance of the first covers album was how unpredictable it was; Jukebox, by comparison, was pretty much the same, which made it inherently less stunning.

Now Chan is back with an EP of outtakes from the Jukebox sessions, called Dark End of the Street. It’s six songs – a couple Aretha Franklin tunes, a CCR redo, and even a bit of Pogues thrown in for the hell of it.

I’ll admit to having had a genuine anticipation for her cover of Fortunate Son, but as soon as the song began, I was struck with the realization that it, well, kinda sounded exactly like I expected it to. And that was a bummer. There isn’t anything wrong with the song, other than the fact that – like the entire EP and the album its sessions originally resulted in – it’s nothing fresh.

Now, I love the way Marshall reinterprets her favourite songs and I give her credit for not merely “updating” the tunes or pillaging them a la Barry Manilow. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that this EP’s just more of the same. One is left with the sinking feeling that, no, this isn’t a bad album; it’s not even far from being a very good one; but it feels too familiar, like she’s gotten to a point in her career where she feels comfortable doing the same thing over and over again, which – frankly – for an artist as talented as her, is a major let-down. She needs to start working outside of her comfort zone a bit more often, because, after all, that’s the whole reason we got a first covers album to begin with.

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