New Cat Power released...

Cat Power: Jukebox by Pete Paphides (London Times)

Long before Chanel declared an interest in her, the denim-clad elders of the music press fell hard for the woman known to her divorced, dysfunctional parents as Chan Marshall – and you can see why. Her drink problem is apparently behind her, as is the heroin-afflicted peer group she left behind in her native Atlanta to start afresh in New York. The backstory does no harm, but neither would it serve that much purpose were you not somehow able to hear all that autobiography in the grain of Cat Power’s voice.

Eight years after her first covers album and two years after she hooked up with Al Green’s old session men for The Greatest, Jukebox suggests that the rarefied company she keeps has compounded her belief in what she can bring to a song. The growth in confidence is illustrated by a version of her own Metal Heart that dresses the original’s emotional wounds in the sort of rich soulful blues she may have been too timorous to attempt a decade previously.

There’s no underestimating the empathy her current band, the Dirty Delta Blues, bring to the picture – in particular, sometime Delta 72 keyboard player Gregg Foreman, whose electric piano work brings a body-temperature ambience to Hank Williams’s Ramblin’ Man and George Jackson’s Aretha, Sing One For Me that calls to mind Joe Sample’s work with the Crusaders. - complete review

From Matador Records: Today we announce the final sequence for Cat Power’s upcoming ‘Jukebox’ album, to be released on January 22. The names below indicate the best known performer of the original songs, who are not necessarily the songwriters:
1. New York (Frank Sinatra)
2. Ramblin’ (Wo)man (Hank Williams)
3. Metal Heart (Cat Power *)
4. Silver Stallion (The Highwaymen)
5. Aretha, Sing One For Me (George Jackson)
6. Lost Someone (James Brown)
7. Lord, Help The Poor And Needy (Jessie Mae Hemphill)
8. I Believe In You (Bob Dylan)
9. Song To Bobby (Cat Power **)
10. Don’t Explain (Billie Holiday)
11. Woman Left Lonely (Janis Joplin)
12. Blue (Joni Mitchell)
* original version on the ‘Moon Pix’ album - ** first appearance of this song

In addition, there will be a limited-edition silver foil deluxe package with a bonus disc containing the following 5 songs:
1. I Feel (Hot Boys)
2. Naked, If I Want To (Moby Grape)
3. Breathless (Nick Cave)
4. Angelitos Negros (Roberta Flack)
5. She’s Got You (Patsy Cline)

Johnnyk: Ordered the deluxe version from Matador Records.
Cat in the studio- Part I Part II Part III - NY Times interview