Originally published by L.S. Media. September 8th 2012.

Normally an album can leave you feeling as exhilarated and insanely happy as almost anything you have ever experienced, sometimes the opposite is true, the melancholy that is there parading through every track on the album, doesn’t necessarily make you despondent but it will grab your attention and the mixture of melancholy and joy is a mix that very few artists manage to pull off.

Such is the enormity of the latest release by Cat Power, Sun, that whilst it has the ability to appear to be an album that is on the surface written during a creative high, scratch underneath that, immerse yourself in Cat’s world and the bitterness and hidden depths that make her so tempting an artist to get to grips with.

What makes her so tempting is her urgency, the need for her soul to be cleansed and washed. It isn’t so much of an artistic cry for help, no she’s far too creative for that, it is more of admission of her life, so much so the songs have a penetration of feeling that transfers the dirt from her life and gratefully infects the listener. They come up to her level of understanding of musical seriousness and appreciate the complex life she has led just that little bit more.

Sun is at times extraordinary and enlightening, Real life as one of the tracks on album suggests is more complicated, more rounded than the narrow definitions we give it or to each other. The awareness that someone may have wanted to be something other than the title or label they have been given is as old as humanity but still no one ever asks the question, happy to go along with the initial designation they already know. In Cat’s world, this is important and that’s what marks her out as special musician. The ability to see beyond the tag and say she met this person who wanted to be something else is heartening and yet brutal.

Like Tori Amos, she is a woman who gets to her subject matter quickly but also leaves the listener desperate to understand more; In Sun the listener has that chance to break down just another small wall that separates artiste, truth and audience.

An album of truth, destructive honesty and hell of lot of charm.

Ian D. Hall.