Cat Power ft. Lana Del Rey
Woman
Domino
We’ve waited a long six years for Cat Power to release new music. Sun, which came out in 2012, was a stark departure from vocalist Chan Marshall’s breathy, dark, blues and soul tinged full-band numbers heard in albums like Jukebox and The Greatest. For Sun, Marshall opted to experiment with electronic sounds, preferring to capture the loops and rhythms of cityscapes like New York.
Woman is a familiar return to form for Marshall. The song shuffles along to the hum of sultry electric keys, a balladeer’s strum of acoustic guitar, and the typical splashes of electric guitar to punctuate the smokey ensemble. This is the Cat Power sound long-time fans will recognize. Lana Del Rey collaborates with Marshall on the track, though her contribution is easily missed unless you really search for her vocals in the mix (and odd coo here and there).
What’s flat about this track is the subject matter: Marshall seemingly wants to hold up her empowerment as a woman, but the result is surface level at best. In fact, it’s not really clear what she’s trying to say at all. It’s a shame because Marshall is fully capable of communicating the depths of her despair (alcoholism in Lived In Bars), or the heights of her hope (evolution after a breakup in Good Woman). Woman feels like Marshall has muzzled herself, when she could be saying so much more.
KAVI GUPPTA
