Album review    Wong Kar-Wai, who cast Chan Marshall opposite
Jude Law in his American movie, My Blueberry Nights, had a line
about the singer's appeal: "If Charles Bukowski and Jane Birkin
had a child, it would be Cat Power". Which is to say that she
flits between sleaze and innocence, and that the two qualities
bleed into each other to the point where they are
indistinguishable.  A shrinking violet who has modelled for Karl
Lagerfeld, inhabits a contradiction. In essence, this
exhibitionist with stage fright is a soul singer. There are
wisps of gospel in her work, and rhythm'n'blues, but you'd wait
an age before hearing her do anything that might easily be
described as "funky". Even on 2006's sultry The Greatest - with
the Hi Records band behind her - her performance was restrained.
Here, with her new band, Dirty Delta Blues (Dirty Three's Jim
White, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's Judah Bauer, Delta 72's
Gregg Foreman, Lizard Music's Erik Paparozzi) the music does get
swampy and dark, but the atavistic urgin