Cat Power – The Greatest

Hello. My copy sounds great on my Dual 701. .

A great album but a poor quality pressing. Cat Power at her best.

Awful album cover.

Matador made a mistake replacing the original cover.

Cat Power - The Greatest

First off, this album is impeccably well-recorded. Each instrument sounds full, live, and lush when taken in a vacuum, but more on that later. Aside from that, the music is some of the most pleasant, heartfelt, and ethereal work I’ve heard of any artist. I don’t know if you can say that this is the greatest (no pun intended!) Cat Power album, but it is immeasurably high up there. These tunes cement Chan as a modern day songwriting genius in my mind, and others have echoed this sentiment prior to me writing this review. The playing by all the featured musicians is also extremely impressive.

Now, while the music and recording are great, I’m not a huge fan of the vinyl mix or master of this album. For an album recorded this well and to have been mastered by Kevin Gray, I am surprised that the bass was so incredibly bloated on this release. That seems to be the case of many modern day albums pressed on vinyl, but either way, I cut -3.5 dB at 80hZ with a Q of 2 with my receiver’s EQ and it plays perfectly now. This also might just be a matter of personal preference…or perhaps my speakers favor bass a bit more than I’d like, but all that being said, if you purchase this album and hear what I heard…hopefully you have an EQ somewhere in your system and can cut a bit of the bass frequencies. After doing that, this album sounds demo record worthy on my system. It cleared up the mud and everything you look for in an audiophile album is here. I wish more bands would do what Chan did here, a super audiophile-quality mainline release from their catalogue as the initial press.

Beautiful, just beautiful. Also, the packaging is GORGEOUS. The pressing from RTI isn’t the greatest (no pun intended…again!), with a decent amount of surface noise, especially between tracks, even after cleaning multiple times. But I’m being a bit nit-picky there. If you like indie, go for this album. If you’re reading this, you are probably already familiar with Chan’s work and are considering purchasing this album. Do yourself a favor and do so before prices shoot up…I see this being a $100+ record some day soon. It’s already close to being such.

Music: 4.5/5
Mixing/mastering: 3.5/5
Packaging: 4.5/5
Pressing: 4/5

Equipment used: Pro-Ject The Classic SB SuperPack turntable, VAS custom wood-body Shure M91 MM cartridge with ML stylus, Pro-Ject Tube Box DS2 Preamp, Klipsch RP-8060FA floor tower speakers, Marantz SR6005 Stereo receiver

-Review by Linc Bradham

I really looked forward to hear the album but I do not recommend this copy.
"The Greatest" - maybe my favourite song of the album - skips 2-3 times at the very beginning.
I bought a mint copy, took out the vinyl out of the paper sleeve and some very light scratches can be seen.
I am sad.

Is there a vinyl version with the 'Dreams' cover song on it, or is it on the CD only version.

A great album with a lovely voice. Not usually my favourite style of music but Cat Power brings something to the table that is hard to find with any other artist.

This is not a Kevin Gray remaster. This is a repress of the first which was cut by Gray and pressed by RTI

pretty ok pressing i got. it seems the bass is way too loud on these, turning them down on my eq makes this sound pretty good! minus the quiet crackling that i cannot get out of it. anyway, if you find cheap you might as well go for it

Agree with previous comment this is a dreadful pressing, I can't listen to it again, back to the CD for me