Cat Power smoothed out her sound with the hypnotic simplicity of this beautiful and intimate expression of humanity and emotional independence. 'You Are Free' took years to produce. Chan Marshall says it was recorded "sporadically. While I was traveling." She worked with producer Adam Kasper although she makes it clear that "he engineered the record and mixed it. Because I don't want anyone ever producing me unless I'm giving my soul to them. Like unless they're writing the songs and I love them so much and I want them to fucking tell me what to do. But I'll never do that...Adam was working on other things, and I worked on his schedule. He'd get these really nice studios, and when he had off time we'd go in and then try to remember what we did like two months ago and pull that tape up. I'd be like, 'Uh, no, I wanna do something new', and then I'd write a new song. So it basically worked like that-- every few months getting together and essentially writing new songs. And then after a year there were like forty different songs and I was going a little insane. He was really helpful in figuring out which songs to use. At some point, you don't know what you're doing. There's no formula...The difficult thing was never fucking getting around to finishing it because we had so much liberty. [Adam] does a lot of big money stuff, so the studios he was getting were like really amazing-- amazing amps, amazing guitars, amazing mics, amazing spaces-- really organic, strange interesting places. But I felt like I was making a mess cause I don't [normally] do it this way. Usually you put the amp in the same place and you record in three days. The difficult thing was the idea of the songs lingering over there [points to an empty seat], and not being able to understand if it was real. Like, 'Is this the record?' And then thinking, 'Am I gonna put this out? Am I gonna put all these piano songs out? Am I gonna... What am I gonna do? I don't know. Oh, [Adam and I] will talk about it in a couple months.' Or whatever...I was looking for somebody who would let me do what I wanted to do, who's a really good engineer. I only sit in a room with someone who presses knobs 'cause I don't know really know how to do it. I'd love to do that by myself, but I need to have someone in there. You know, you rent the studio and they're in there and they're kinda like, [imitates old studio guy] 'I mean, you wanna do this, you understand, but like... f-e-e-e-e-e-edback.' It's like fuck off!"
'You Are Free' features Chan Marshall on vocals, guitars, and piano; with different musicians sitting in for specific songs: Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three plays violin on "Good Woman"; Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters plays bass on "Speak For Me" and drums on "Speak For Me", "He War" and "Shaking Paper"; Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam provides vocals on "Good Woman" and "Evolution"; David Campbell does the string arrangements on "Good Woman" and "Werewolf"; and Maggie & Emma contribute vocals on "Good Woman".
Marshall says that music is her lifeline: "It's like when you get thirsty, or you get hungry, and you say: 'Aw, man, I really need some water'; it's like 'Aw, man, I really wanna play guitar,' or 'Aw, man, I really wanna read a book,' or 'Aw, man, I really wanna go swimming,' or, 'Aw, I wanna make out.' It's just listening to instinct, and that's not hard." She explains the meaning behind her songs: "Just sort of living, y'know? Living, remembering, thinking, questioning, learning, feeling stupid."
'You Are Free' was her first album to chart, making it to number one hundred and fifty-seven in the UK, one hundred and five on the US Billboard 200, sixty-seven in France, two on the US Independent Albums chart, and number one on the US Independent Albums chart.
http://www.catpowermusic.com/
The video for 'He War' was directed by Brett Vapnek.
'You Are Free'
full album:
All songs written and composed by Chan Marshall except where noted.
1. "I Don't Blame You" 3:05
2. "Free" 3:34
3. "Good Woman" 3:58
4. "Speak for Me" 3:04
5. "Werewolf" Michael Hurley 4:08
6. "Fool" 3:49
7. "He War" 3:31
8. "Shaking Paper" 4:36
9. "Babydoll" 2:56
10. "Maybe Not" 4:19
11. "Names" 4:50
12. "Half of You" 2:42
13. "Keep on Runnin'" John Lee Hooker 3:51
14. "Evolution" 4:44
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