Album Review: Cat Power, Wanderer

The omens are not encouraging delving into Chan Marshall’s first album in six years. As Cat Power, she has swung from devastating highs to awful lows, and come out the other side of several excruciating breakdowns.

But Wanderer’s title track is maudlin with bells on – inspired, says Marshall, by her years as a travelling troubadour, taking her music to her people. There’s no nuance here – nothing to the sad ditty beyond a what-it-says-on-the-tin celebration of Marshall’s peripatetic lifestyle. It’s cheese on a stick. The good news is that the record improves immediately thereafter. A creeping piano opens ‘In Your Face’, while the baroque ‘You Get’ is a showcase for the gorgeous angst that has been a feature of Marshall’s writing all the way back to her 1998 break-out album, Moon Pix.

There’s also a guest turn from Lana Del Rey on ‘Woman’ – a crepuscular soft-rock banger in which Del Rey comes off as the junior partner, and Marshall as the voice of heartache, pain and hard-won wisdom.

7/10

Out October 5