Cat Power What Would The Community Think CD

Personnel: Chan "Cat Power" Marshall (guitar, piano); Tim Foljahn (guitar); Doug Easley (pedal steel); Davis (Moog); Steve Shelley (drums, xylophone).
Recorded at Easley Studios, Memphis, Tennessee in February 1996.
Personnel: Chan Marshall (guitar, piano); Tim Foljahn (guitar); Davis (Moog synthesizer); Steve Shelley (xylophone, drums).
Recording information: Easley, Memphis (02/1996).
What Would the Community Think was the second album Chan Marshall released in 1996, but its richness suggests a longer period of evolution. From the first warm notes of "In this Hole," it's clear that Marshall's voice -- as a singer and a songwriter -- is not only stronger and more focused, but more empathetic as well. Where her previous works were dense and cathartic, What Would the Community Think gives her voice and lyrics space to unfurl and involve the listener; the title track alone holds an album's worth of eloquence in Marshall's hushed, clear vocals, backed by guitar, feedback, and an eerie, echoing piano. Fortunately, that leaves Marshall 11 other tracks with which to forge a fine balance between angular, angst-ridden punk and her gentler, folk-country tendencies. Different combinations of these extremes make Cat Power's sound more diverse but also more cohesive. Tense, tight songs like "Good Clean Fun" and "Nude as the News" retain the reflective, thoughtful nature of quieter numbers like "King Rides By" and "Water and Air," which turn the power of the album's louder moments into slow-building, implosive tension. Two of What Would the Community Think's finest moments, "They Tell Me" and "Taking People," are unabashedly blues and country-inflected, revealing Marshall not just as a cathartic vocalist, but as a true soul singer. Similarly, her covers of Peter Jefferies' "Fate of the Human Carbine" and Smog's "Bathysphere" show off Marshall's ability to make any song a Cat Power song. An intimate, personal album, What Would the Community Think makes imperfection beautiful and turns vulnerability into musical strength. ~ Heather Phares
1996's WHAT WOULD THE COMMUNITY THINK? Chan (pronounced "Shawn") Marshall's second album under the name Cat Power, finds the North Carolinian at lo-fi maverick Doug Easley's Memphis studio, her soft, engagingly shy voice and delicate acoustic guitar supported by Easley's pedal steel and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley's percussion. Though Easley and Shelley are better known for working with much louder, noisier artists than Marshall, they never overpower her sensitive but sturdy material.
Sounding more self-assured than she did on her debut, 1995's DEAR SIR, Marshall invests more passion and fire in songs like the foreboding "Water and Air" and the obsessive, feedback and piano-laced title track than one expects to find in the slacker-friendly lo-fi genre. Elsewhere, the delicate "King Rides By" is an unvarnished love song that packs an equally powerful emotional wallop. This is an outstanding, underrated album.Entertainment Weekly (9/20/96, p.82) - "North Carolina native Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power) raises goose bumps with bluesy, traumatized songs on which she whispers laments over a spare arrangement of guitar and drums..."
- Rating: A
Alternative Press (10/96, pp.70-71) - 5 (out of 5) - "...it seems she derives pervertedly sweet joy from wrenching out her guts and admiring them...Tragedy measures itself in feeling and hers is executed in perfect Tennesee Williams style..."
Option (1-2/97, p.79) - "...will appeal to those who like songs performed with a minimum of embellishment (another good reference point would be Palace's ARISE THEREFORE) and who can stomach hearing an artist who sounds as though she's entirely unaware of our voyeuristic ears."