Cat Power: The Greatest

Herald rating: * * * *

Chan "Cat Power" Marshall was down this way last summer.

She reportedly wrote some of the songs which appear on this album while she was here. Others came at home in Atlanta and on tour in Spain.

But the real geographical quirk to this is where it was recorded - at Memphis' famous Ardent Studios.

On the sessions were players from the Hi Records band who usually back the likes of Al Green, not painfully shy indie stars whose albums have never risked breaking her out of the underground.

Her last one, You Are Free, won her some wider attention - not that Marshall's fragile, stage fright-prone psyche seems able to deal with it.

It's a dark warm glow of an album that works in spite of its incongruous mix of voice and backers.

With The Greatest she risks the spotlight turned up even brighter. Though that title - also the opening track - is no statement of increased self-assertiveness. The songs are mostly delicate sepulchral things of lilting pianos and shuffling beats, with the occasional swathe of strings or forlorn brass supplementing the woozy atmosphere.

There's an elegant closing-time quality to tracks like Lived in Bars, and After It All which comes with some neat piano's-been-drinking ivory-ticklings, slide guitar and a spot of whistling.

Throughout, the smoky-voiced Marshall muses on everything from the first flush of love (the sweet Could We) to raging desire (Where is My Love) to romantic betrayal (Hate), all culminating in the intense, riveting Love and Communication, which closes the album in a late-arriving blaze of guitar and pizzicato strings.

It's a dramatic finale to an otherwise slow-burning album, one which creeps up on you and captivates with its match of quietly unsettling songs and hazy atmosphere. Once it gets its claws in ...

Label: Matador/Rhythmethod