Cat Power

Chan Marshall, known to the rock-and-roll world as Cat Power, is a painfully shy woman with a lot to say. You Are Free, her new album and first since 2001's bleak The Covers Record, is the least self-assured-sounding self-assured record in ages. "Don't be in love with the autograph/Just be in love when you scream that song/All night long," Marshall sings on "Free." The song should be a jangly free-for-all, classic pop with the kind of swinging energy that defined early Elvis Costello and Bleach-era Kurt Cobain. It's not. That's what makes it so tense. The folkie singer keeps her arrangement skeletal, with acoustic strums and restrained drums. She sings as if glee is self-conscious protest--no primal screams or exultation, just a flat whimper. My interpretation: The artist wants to be happy, but doesn't really know how, like she's hosting a go-go party for her imaginary friends. She channels her hopes and fears wonderfully but sounds terrified of the exposure.

Ultimately, it takes Dave Grohl to help propel her out of her shell--or to at least come close. Grohl and Foo Fighters bandmate Taylor Hawkins slap a double-drum arrangement on "He War," so that when Cat Power sings "I'm not that hot chick/And if you want me to run with it/We're onto your same old trick" in vocals that sound filtered through a phonograph, it actually takes on the intended urgency. You Are Freeis definitive work from an artist who--outwardly anyway--doesn't want to be definitive about anything, which perhaps makes Marshall the rock-and-roll equivalent of the ugly duckling. Cat Power is truly a swan, but will she ever realize it?