Chan Marshall, 31, the singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist and pretty much sole member of Cat Power, may be the most effective anti-performer around. Her quiet, plain-Jane alto is always fading to a whisper, her instrumental skills are beginner-level functional, her song structures are simple, her tempos dirgelike. She won a cult following in the mid-’90s with her postpunk debut album, “Dear Sir,” released on Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley’s label; a less small cult following with the minimalist 1998 “Moonpix” and the equally spare and moody “The Covers” in 2000–with well-chosen songs by Dylan, the Stones and the regrettably obscure Michael Hurley.
Cat Power’s new album, “You Are Free,” adds occasional drums (by Dave Grohl), another layer or so of guitar, some grainy violin and a couple of guest vocals by Eddie Vedder, but only on “Free” does Marshall even flirt with rocking out. As always, she finds her truest voice in the saddest pieces: the breakup song “Good Woman” (“I want to be a good woman/And I want you to be a good man/ This is why I will be leaving/This is why I can’t see you no more”) and the nearly unlistenable “Names,” a sequence of mini-biographies of terminally damaged children. (“Her name was Naomi/Beautiful round face so ashamed/Told me how to please a man/After school in the back of the bus/She was doin’ it every day/She was 11 years old.”) Her cover of Hurley’s “Werewolf Song” is the gentlest horror movie imaginable. And somehow Marshall’s voice, which seems to come from an inner distance, brings comfort in all this darkness: a soul whispering the direst secrets to itself, in a place out of harm’s way.
