Dark Was The Night is a fundraiser for the Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDS, comprising 31 exclusive tracks. Moreover, though, much like a previous Red Hot effort, 1993′s No Alternative (Nirvana, Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Smashing Pumpkins, Pavement, Jonathan Richman), it acts as a snapshot of a certain time and place in North American alternative music (Stuart Murdoch, Devastations, Riceboy Sleeps, Antony Hegarty and Jose Gonzalez company excepted). The record takes in a healthy cross-section of the major players in the scene over the last couple of years; a period of unbridled creativity and critical hosannahs shone upon the music that not so long ago would have been quietly left to fend for its own cult following on the underground. So how do you approach something like this, with no thematic link or stylistic even keel, just a hell of a lot of proven quality intended, as the producers Aaron and Bryce Dessner (of The National) have reinforced, merely as a showcase for “the best in independent music, with an emphasis on traditional themes played and arranged in a contemporary way” (whatever that means)? By throwing traditional review narrative form out of the window and tackling it sequentially, I guess.

So… Dirty Projectors kick off with a David Byrne collaboration that he may have written the words to but in recording doesn’t seem to include David Byrne on anything more than backing vocals, although ‘Knotty Pine’ seems to funnel the wired shuffle of Talking Heads’ first couple of albums to a more straightened out version of Dave Longstreth and co’s eclectic culture surfing. Nick Drake’s ‘Cello Song’ is given The Books’ elegant glitch-folk treatment with Jose Gonzalez on restrained vocals, drifting gorgeously on a digital looped bed. Feist and Ben Gibbard come together on a spare, chiming countrified version of ‘Train Song’ (made semi-famous by Vashti Bunyan) that sounds more like Nancy & Lee than either’s proper work. The development of Bon Iver from solo project to full band expansion while keeping that necessary intimacy continues on ‘Brackett, WI’, brittle guitar and heavenly harmonies this time joined by organ and prominent bass; it wouldn’t have been out of place on the Blood Bank EP. Folk standard ‘Deep Blue Sea’ originally appeared in home recorded lullaby version on Grizzly Bear’s Friend EP last year and reappears fleshed out and warmer, Dan Rossen’s vocals and fingerpicking augmented by woodwind, electronic distortion and percussion. If their forthcoming album takes after this it’ll be unstoppable.

The National themselves take the spotlight next, ‘So Far Around The Bend’ less outwardly emotive than usual in a sawing back porch strum with decorative woodwind frenzy and a song about a woman lost and alone through choice in New York, apparently “praying for Pavement to get back together”. Yeasayer do their expansive otherworldly rhythmic thing a lot better than usual on ‘Tightrope’, and it’s far easier to get excited about than another version of ‘Feeling Good’, especially as My Brightest Diamond adds little to the original arrangement. Title track honours are left to avant garde San Franciscan string section the Kronos Quartet, and once four minutes of plucked string bending has sufficiently tested your patience Antony appears with Bryce Dressner on backup for a fairly perfunctory, vocal pyrotechnic-free version of Dylan’s ‘I Was Young When I Left Home’. Justin Vernon returns with Aaron Dessner backing him up on ‘Big Red Machine’, which pitches Vernon’s multitracked falsetto against insistent piano hammering. It’s an odd juxtaposition but no less intriguing for that. Hard to tell if ‘Sleepless’ is much of a preview of the Decemberists’ rock opera direction, given the stately nearly eight minute rumination sounds like it could have been an offcut from Castaways And Cutouts. Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam gives himself sixty-seven seconds on ‘Stolen Houses (Die)’, which means he’s reduced to vocal and guitar and so can’t ruin it with the soft rock settings of late, while Grizzly Bear and Feist both reappear with a reworking of ‘Service Bell’, originally from the former’s Horn Of Plenty debut album, which with its percussion loops and doo-wop backing vocals actually sounds more like Rossen’s Department Of Eagles, before the first disc closes with something of a war of choral folk attrition, more than ten minutes of Sufjan Stevens. ‘You Are The Blood’ – another cover, apparently – throws a curveball of electronic bleeps for its first thirty seconds and continues in a pattern of underlying electronic effects, samples and and found sounds in the background in a way he hasn’t explored since 2002′s Enjoy Your Rabbit, over which gradually develops a pattern of sympathetic male-female harmonies, cinematic brass and galloping drums before breaking down into cutting up his own vocals and instruments, veering off into heavily reverbed George Harrison piano-led contemplation for a bit, then back to the laptop, then explodimng into joyful brass-led fanfare, then distorted guitar solo over glitches, then solo piano voluntary, then a bit of everything to close. Phew. There’s as many ideas in this one track as those that have followed Sufjan’s path have ever had, and whether one-off playful experiment or signpost as to where he goes whenever he next deigns to record an album – three and a half years since Illinois now – it’s a masterstroke.

Still with it? Good, on to CD 2, which at least initially is something of a disappointment. Even Arcade Fire’s ‘Lenin’ turns the bombast down but ends up sounding more like their pre-Funeral EP, reaching towards something distinct without quite making it. Chief offenders are Beirut, still in underwhelming French mode, and My Morning Jacket, who turn in a song that sounds almost exactly like a British 80s AOR hit that I frustratingly can’t place (helpful, I know). As with most things it takes Dave Sitek to turn things around, who gives the Troggs’ ‘With A Girl Like You’ the fuzzy, synth layered production treatment he’s recently given Telepathe, plus horns and Sitek’s vaguely threatening lower register. Never mind knocking out a cover, Buck 65 reworks a track that’s already been on this compilation, turning Sufjan’s epic into the queasy, gospel choir aided ‘Blood Pt 2′, while the New Pornographers look inside themselves and knock off a version of their own Dan Bejar’s Destroyer’s ‘Hey Snow White’ that allows them to really indulge their AM radio rock fantasies and Yo La Tengo are in one of their relatively subdued Velvets moods on ‘Gentle Hour’. It says here Stuart Murdoch’s ‘Another Saturday’ is to the tune of traditional Scottish folk song ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’; whatever, it’s the type of ruminative, personal acoustic lament Murdoch hasn’t recorded in some time, and with references to his church background.

Riceboy Sleeps will be a new name to most but lead member Jónsi Birgisson of Sigur Ros won’t be, the eight and a half minutes of slowly shifting and drifting ambient waves almost daring the listener to use those ‘glacial’/'pastoral’ descriptions that have long since been deemed passe when describing Birgisson’s main project. An alt-countrified run starts with Cat Power’s interpretation of ‘Amazing Grace’ which is – shock! – Memphis bluesy and continues with Andrew Bird taking the warmer approach of his current album on as he grants the Handsome Family’s ‘The Giant of Illinois’ lush orchestration alongside his own multi-layered violin plucking and sawing and shimmering guitar, before Conor Oberst scratches a bluegrass country itch duetting with Gillian Welch on a reworked ‘Lua’. It suits him. Blonde Redhead are also in stripped back mode collaborating with shimmering Melbourne outfit Devastations, a laid back, comely Kazu Makino sounding oddly like Black Box Recorder’s Sarah Nixey against distorted piano, and it’s left to Kevin Drew to bring the whole charabanc home with the yearning slowcore of the Low-esque (if not Low-esque titled) ‘Love Vs Porn’.

So no, it doesn’t all work, and even by the nature of “previously unreleased tracks” for something promoting the fresh pickings of the very best available there’s quite a few reworkings and covers. However, despite the first CD being clearly the stronger, the hits clearly outweigh the misses, showing a new possible direction for some (Oberst, Sufjan), bringing the best out of others (Yeasayer, The Books) and doing what it should do, reasserting the claims of some of its most lauded (Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, The National, The Decemberists). This is where – oh, let’s say it – hipster music largely stands in early 2009, and we’re all the better for it.
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Dark Was The Night

Chan Marshall has never been shy about disclosing her influences – Cat Power’s Myspace page is more an homage to beloved artists than a promotional tool. In January, Cat Power followed up 2000’s The Covers Record with Jukebox, another batch of songs made famous by other people; Dark End of the Street is a digital-only release of five more tracks from the Jukebox sessions.

As signposts of Cat Power’s evolution, these two covers albums reflect the subtle transformation from where she began her career as a raw, bluesy indie waif on 1996’s What Would the Community Think to her arrival as a credible soul singer on 2006’s The Greatest. Though her voice isn’t as powerful as the Queen of Soul’s, Marshall moulds Aretha Franklin’s “It Ain’t Fair” and the title track to suit her strengths. Employing Cowboy Junkies’ brooding cover of “Sweet Jane” as a broad template, Cat Power’s Dirty Delta Blues Band slows down the tempo and provides an accomplished backdrop to the understated intensity of Marshall’s smoky voice. But when stacked against the original recording, there is just no comparison. When she chooses to emphasise gospel organs on Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)”, the song transcends faithful rendition and becomes uniquely her own. Unfortunately, the darkly cinematic treatment of most songs on Dark End of the Street lacks this track’s climactic build-up, and too much of the album’s sound falls flat.

Her latter-day acquired professionalism is, ironically, Marshall’s Achilles heel. Despite the inventive ways in which she overhauls the arrangements, the songs have a predictable quality her earlier work avoided. Quieter moments were brilliantly punctuated with guitar squalls that seemed to come from nowhere, adding a keen sense of urgency. Without contrasts like that, Dark End of the Street, like Jukebox, is merely an adequate listening experience.

While her choices remain invigorating and her modern, stripped-down sound refreshes dated production techniques, the Jukebox sessions would have benefited from, say, a Sonic Youth tune, or something more drastic, such as Black Flag – both of which appear as Marshall’s YouTube video picks. The best song on Dark End of the Street is Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son”. Marshall sings “fortunate one” with a quiet bravado that is as affecting as it is removed from Fogerty’s original. Yet even as one of the most inspired tunes in her extensive collection of covers, it only serves to highlight how much better Cat Power is when performing Cat Power songs.
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Cat Power on Myspace

Dark End of the Street is out now on Matador.

Cat Power started the year with Jukebox, her second album of cover songs and a tribute to the great vocalists who had influenced her over the years.

And now, to end the year, Cat Power is to release another set of covers, recorded at the same productive sessions as Jukebox, and now finally released.

The remaining unreleased tracks are to be aired this December in the form of Dark End Of The Street, a six-track gatefold double-10″ and download EP (tracklisting below).

Tracklisting:
1. Dark End Of The Street (James Carr/Aretha Franklin) *
2. Fortunate Son (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
3. Ye Auld Triangle (The Pogues) *
4. I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now) (Otis Redding)
5. Who Knows Where The Time Goes (Sandy Denny/Fairport Convention) *
6. It Ain’t Fair (Aretha Franklin) *

* denotes entirely unreleased song

The almond-eyed tortured seductress Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, is back. Her early decidedly indie, arguably flaky, and musically lo-fi years had passed me by, but the opening bars of previous sultry outing’s The Greatest had me snagged hook, line and sinker. It survived to remain among my albums of that year despite emerging early in January. So, two years on, I approached this new release with a massive sense of expectation. She has vanquished some demons and found some stability in both her personal and professional life. What next? Well, somewhat disappointingly to those initial expectations, it’s a covers album, the second in her career, and this time a tribute to those vocalists who have provided inspiration down the years. My second gripe was that most tracks on the review copy had been specially butchered with jarring premature fades. With so much of the enjoyment here being of tone and atmosphere, it did set this reviewer’s teeth on edge more than once.

Thankfully, Marshall’s textured voice and phrasing still stamps this collection with her own distinct mark. There’s also a full time backing band, Dirty Delta Blues (Judah Bauer, Gregg Foreman, Jim White, Erik Papparazzi), to continue the southern gothic soul sound of The Greatest, helped by infusions of authenticity from several guests, most notably Spooner Oldham (Neil Young, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan). It is Marshall’s voice that is, as expected, most often to the fore, with subtle support from the boys in the band, but the best tracks are those where they kick back and emerge from the shadows. On ‘Aretha, Sing One For Me’ they do a mighty fine sloppy Faces impression with squealing organ and grumbling guitar, the latter also driving Dylan’s ‘I Believe In You’, reinterpreted as personal love song rather than religious dedication.

The openers ‘Theme from New York, New York’, and Hank Williams’ ‘Ramblin’ (Wo)man’ are barely covers – being so turned inside-out as to be barely recognisable save for the odd familiar lyric. From that point on the roots of Chan Marshall’s current sound are easier to trace through the more obscure selections. There is one new original, ‘Song To Bobby’, a flaccid narrative about trying to hook up with Dylan himself that largely rambled out of my attention span; plus a revisiting of her own ‘Metal Heart’ from 1998′s Moon Pix that does have the bite and feel of The Greatest. Certain efforts stand or fall according to the strength of, or your affection for, the original. On Billie Holiday’s ‘Don’t Explain’ Marshall is brooding over a piano, and she is nicely subdued but emotional for Joplin’s ‘A Woman Left Lonely’. That turns out to be a bit of a slow-burn highlight. However, the album finishes with Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’, all fuzzy head hung low over ashtray; but it meanders without hitting home and forms a lacklustre finale.

If by some chance you don’t have The Greatest, do something to remedy that. This is a decent continuation in overall style but never quite manages to overcome the initial sense of anticlimax. An element of treading water, a degree of buying time. Perhaps that was necessary after the upheavals in her personal life. However, it has to be hoped that a more creative Chan Marshall will be back soon.
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Links
Cat Power [official site] [myspace] [buy it]