Chan Marshall owes her career as much to psychodrama as music, but it’s just now that she’s reached her most harrowing point: a cover of George Jackson’s “Aretha, Sing One For Me” that recalls Natalie Merchant vocally and John Mayer’s pseudo-soulfulness musically. Yikes. Jukebox, Marshall’s second album of covers, mostly continues the cleaned-up, virtually lobotomized aesthetic of 2006’s unfortunately heralded The Greatest. Even if Marshall’s liberty-taking revisions of others’ tunes on 2000’s The Covers Record weren’t always successful, they at least forced you to ponder the nature of remakes altogether: How similar is too similar, and how different is disrespectful? Not so anymore.
At her best, Marshall merely exposes the beauty of the Highwaymen’s “Silver Stallion” by stripping it down to an acoustic guitar. She brings more melodic cohesion to “Blue” than Joni Mitchell did, but that’s the problem: It all feels so composed. “Metal Heart,” a cover of her own song (from 1998’s Moon Pix), fares best. Whereas before, the possibility of Marshall’s imperfect arrangements falling apart any second created a narcotic tension, the conscious suspense here is no less compelling. It’s her best vocal performance, too, although her always-amazing pipes get in the way and she coasts on sounding pretty. Before, Marshall would put everything—her soul, her manic sense of musicianship, her possible psychosis—into her covers. Now, she just shows up and opens her mouth. [www.matadorrecords.com]
—Rich Juzwiak
