About CAT POWER's third cover album

Covers is the eleventh studio album by American musician Cat Power, the stage name of American singer-songwriter Chan Marshall. Her third collection of cover songs, following 2000's The Covers Record and 2008's Jukebox.

Behind her fringe, under her covers, trading as CAT POWER, she's the indie icon who flew under the radar. Now she's singing the songs of Billie Holiday and Nick Cave, are we - ironically - seeing the real Chan Marshall at last? 

Chan Marshall is great at impressions. First, there’s the mockney rock star one she uses to shout “I’m here for the PEOPLE!”. Later, she lapses into an excellent Patti Smith, issuing advice — as Smith once did to an overwhelmed Marshall — on the “respaaahnsibility” that comes with being an artist. Meanwhile, anyone who has heard Cat Power’s adoring Bob Dylan pastiche Song To Bobby will already know Marshall has his phrasing down, but it’s still delightful to hear her slide into his speaking voice as she recalls their 2007 meeting backstage at one of his Paris shows: “What you doin’ in town? You recordin’ or playin’? You got the band with you or solo? You got the same name as Charlie Parker’s wife...”

Yet when it comes to Cat Power's three albums of cover versions — 2000’s The Covers Record, 2OO8’s Jukebox and, now, the nonchalantly titled Covers — the last thing on offer is impersonation. Instead, Covers underlines Marshall’s ability to drill right into the emotional core of other people’s songs — Iggy Pop’s The Endless Sea, Frank Ocean’s Bad Religion, A Pair Of Brown Eyes by The Pogues — and to make them sound as if they have always belonged in her voice.

“Whenever Chan plays guitar and sings,” says Dirty Three drummer Jim White, who first played with Cat Power on 1998’s haunted, ardent Moon Pix, “the music is all there.”

While Chan Marshall's reputation soundly rests on albums rooted in her own songwriting — 1996's fractured, furious What Would The Community Think, for example, or 2006’s The Greatest, recorded with a blue-chip band of Memphis soul musicians — her covers records are anything but stopgaps. For Marshall, these curations and interpretations of other people’s songs are central to her work.