The Covers Record

Posterity may well record that this, Chan Marshall's fifth album as Cat Power, is the most minimalist pop record ever made.

A lonely soul at the best of times, Marshall's last album found her gently assisted by Dirty Three, who provided a backdrop of subdued disarray over which her sunbleached Southern whispers crept and murmured. Compared to Covers' near-silent expanses, of course, it sounds positively orchestral now. A first listen, then, leaves you longing for additional instrumentation, more complex arrangements, something, to bring additional colours to her palette; but further investigation bears rich fruit not immediately apparent in such seemingly barren landscapes.

'Naked if I Want To' and Bob Dylan's 'Paths of Victory' are lent a molasses-sweet country laziness we've been missing since Mazzy Star ceased to shine; elsewhere, 'Salty Dog' has a playful, seafaring charm, and she does soul-wrenching justice to Nina Simone's 'Wild is the Wind,' rendering it simultaneously chilling and breath-warm. Possibly best of all is a cover of the Stones' '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'. Minus the chorus and the signature guitar, it is quietly frustrated, wryly funny and utterly unrecognisable from the original.

Sometimes less is, in fact, more.