Cat Power – ‘Cat Power Sings Bob Dylan’ album review: paying homage to the master
How does an artist pay tribute to one of the biggest stars in the world? Even though it’s easy to write songs informed by one’s idols, it’s an entirely different matter to take those tracks that inspired you as a kid and turn them into something new for another generation. Although Bob Dylan may have some of the most revered songs in history under his belt, Cat Power found a way to re-interpret his material for their latest live album.
Done in the same style as Dylan in his prime, Cat Power’s latest offering is practically a note-for-note recreation of what Mr Zimmerman played at the Royal Albert Hall in 1966. Although the idea of putting a spin on Dylan’s classics has worked well for countless artists through the years, how does Cat Power’s signature sound measure up?
First of all, the group planted their best foot forward by playing the first half of the concert just like Dylan did, featuring nothing but an acoustic guitar, harmonica, and voice. Since nothing separates the audience from the sound of Power’s voice, it gives more exposure to how she interprets the lyrics of the songs, especially with her breathtaking rendition of ‘Desolation Row’.
One of the core elements of the album that makes it a completely new experience is the fact that a female is singing them. Since Dylan had run into trouble with his depictions of the opposite sex in many of his songs, hearing the female perspective singing tracks like ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘Just Like a Woman’ makes the listener appreciate the song in a different light, exposing the irony behind these misguided controversies, by revealing the unreliable narrator trope beneath the tracks.
While the concert is an intimate affair for most of the first half, Cat Power practically wakes up the listener halfway through the record with ‘Tell Me Momma’, where the whole band comes screaming in behind her. Even though the group isn’t trying to mimic the same accentuations that The Hawks did on the Dylan original, it’s interesting to hear the group weave their way through the song at their own pace, almost like they are discovering the track in real-time as they play.
When talking about Chan Marshall’s voice on the final product, though, there are usually two ways to look at it. Even though it’s easy to see her as putting on a Dylan facade throughout the performance, her smokey register has a specific lustrous power that Dylan’s never possessed without a rattle, almost like we’re getting to hear the versions of the tracks that the songwriter probably intended them to be heard in.
Then again, no one can sing a song like its writer, and certain tracks like ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ tend to feel like Cat Power doing her best rendition of a Bob Dylan song rather than putting her spin on the classic tune. For the most part, though, her range provides a far different look at what Dylan’s work could mean, inhabiting most of the songs as if she had just arrived with them in her home studio.
Even with the phenomenal performances, the biggest strength comes from the audience, offering a push-and-pull nature to some of the tracks, including a moment towards the beginning of ‘Ballad of Thin Man’ where someone mockingly cries out what sounds like ‘Judas’, echoing the sentiment of when Dylan first went electric. While those audio discrepancies can be tweaked in the modern age, the fact that they left it in is a good indicator of the kind of artists working on a project like this.
From front to back, this recreation is coming from the perspective of people who strongly revere Dylan’s words and want to celebrate what he gave to the world. Compared to covers albums where artists use their idols as a musical mask over their own faces, Cat Power documents what it must have been like in those hallowed halls in 1966 when Dylan played there for the first time. Even though Cat Power might bypass the idea of a concert recreation, this is the ideal way an artist can pay tribute to one of their musical heroes.
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