It’s nice, at least, to hear her voice. Ever the contrary one, rather than properly following up ‘The Greatest’ and buoying her now slowly but steadily rising star, she chooses to put out her second full record of cover versions. This is not as a straight cop out as one might think though, rest assured we’re not even in the same hemisphere as that recent Radio 1 anniversary abomination; bands going through the motions, sapping life out of standards without the vaguest inclination to live and/or breathe the songs, for a fast track to a marginally raised profile and probable daytime airplay. Most of the songs on ‘Jukebox’ aren’t even in the mainstream consciousness; many might feasibly hear it in their mind’s ear as an album of original Chan Marshall material. And while they’d be wrong, there’s no doubting that she absolutely acts as though they’re right, making everything here hers’.
The one instantly recognisable inclusion, enduringly cheesy end-of-night high-kicking opus ‘New York New York’, is wrestled from Sinatra’s crooning clutches and melded down to a husky, sensual and deeply soulful Suzanne Vega-esque private monologue with a voice so pure and aching it ties your stomach in double knots. How could she not make them her own with that voice? Similar treatment is doled out to Hank Williams’ ‘Rambling Man’ – here as ‘Ramblin’ (Wo)man’ – which builds up to the most delicious climax, her voice exploding like a honey thunderclap, the Motown hammond gorgeousness of ‘Aretha, Sing One For Me’ originally by George Jackson and Bob Dylan’s ‘I Believe In You’ relinquished of its bumbling but none of its punch.
Mysteriously, on paper at least, she also chooses to include two of her own songs, ‘Metal Heart’ and ‘Song For Bobby’ (a tribute to Mr Dylan, so that is at least fitting), but they slide into place alongside more revered company without so much as an eyebrow raised and mysterious they no longer seem. The new Cat Power, as first seen on ‘The Greatest’ and now here – and presumably with whatever will come next – is no longer a folk renegade, disparate or fragile or brittle, those qualities seem to belong to the past. The musical backdrop is now fairly conventional soul, professionally delivered. But really, you’d give anything to hear that voice in new contexts. And this record, aside from its creative interpretations, is a perfect showcase for that.