Liz Phair was a grifter. Using sexuality as a weapon, she turned the tables on obsessive boys and set their hearts aflutter with brazen lyrics, like her dead-to-the-world, faux-hooker praise for doin' it doggie-style: "That way we can fuck and watch TV." Forgiving "Explain It To Me", Phair was in many ways a coy tease, partying and watching porn with guys she'd never date, despite their lust for her. Chan Marshall was never so much fun, never crude or masculine; she's the opposite fantasy, the porcelain art school doll whose confusion you never understood. She's the girl that never called you back, that made you lose your cool and leave two messages. Every time you see her on the street, or a mutual friend tells you, "Yeah, I saw her at Cokie's, she's dating the guy from so and so," it ruins your weekend.

A cagey songbird, Chan has a famously fragile ego and skittish countenance. She's wrestled with the consequences of baring a relentlessly observant soul to the world, and bagged on any number of shows when heckled or simply "not feeling it." What fame she currently enjoys is due in large part to the fallout from those freakouts, the reputation of being "crazy," and it's absolute bullshit. The Problem With Music doesn't have as much to do with the influence of corporations or digital piracy as it does the delirious desire to be spat upon or condescended to by seemingly unflappable, fuck-everything rebels, projecting a confidence their sycophantic fans wish they could muster. Kids want to see their dreams onstage, which used to be harmless, but cool, cold fantasies about credibility, cash and chaos have given rise to an increasingly cocksure collection of garage rock dopes with store-bought sticky-up hair. It's a solid indication that pose is still prose to the uneducated, and that nothing has really changed in fifty years.

Unlike most celebrities (Fall 2001 fashion spread in New York Magazine: check), Chan Marshall is unrecognizable from one photo to the next. One moment she's a giddy fourteen year-old girl, the next she's Juliette Binoche. Recently, she's Nico. Whether anxiety, insecurity, substance abuse or all three are to blame, few artists have gone through as much physical change without plastic surgery. In person, Marshall's face undulates with each syllable, conveying a vast range of emotions in a single inflection. When she's singing, however, it's an entirely different story: Ms. Power is a siren on stage, a shepherdess, gently coaxing words across indefinite miles of memory, before tenderly putting them to pasture or unleashing whatever betrayal they carry in tow. She's a representative for all manner of loss and regret, and serves us in good stead on You Are Free, her first album in five years.

1998's Moon Pix set the stage for a hugely promising follow-up, but Chan missed the side of that barn. The Covers Record was a dashed off, carefree run through the classics, a placeholder for creativity she was unable to channel. In hindsight, it's a good thing she didn't document any new material after the mostly disastrous Moon Pix tour: There's an overt irony to The Covers Record insofar as Chan hid under them for a few years there.

Those days-- the sad days, the manic, childish days-- seem very long gone, as Cat Power reclaims her history, potential and allure in this collection of impressionist balladry, hampered only by a few flat numbers and some awkwardly totemic (though entirely expected) nods to Joni Mitchell. "I Don't Blame You" is one of them, a third-person apology to self, the sort of thing addicts and those new to therapy compose on admission, though more than likely it's Chan retranslating a sympathetic fan letter. In either case, she uses the opening slot as a mostly disconnected salvo, a statement of intent. Though she slips into its nudity once more on the brutal "Names"-- which is either a public service announcement against child abuse or an honest recollection of tragedies Chan Marshall witnessed growing up (and I'm loath to think the joke of artistic license is on us)-- You Are Free is as stylistically unrestrained as Moon Pix, and twice as accomplished.

"He War" enjoyed most of the advance praise for this album, posted in digital preview form on the Matador website. This shrieking, pounding centerpiece is second only to PJ Harvey's "Big Exit" in the canon of Heart tributes, at once bringing together the stilted tempo and clean electric guitars dominating indie rock since Guided by Voices came on the scene. Beyond nominally decrying the Quixotic male impulse that fuels her oeuvre, "He War" underscores how remarkable Marshall's voice is, turning an otherwise pedestrian, technically amateur tune into an assured rock anthem draped in sonorous, shrill wails. The detached, bemused innocence and referential genius of the video for "Cross Bones Style" broke Cat Power to a wider audience, even though the song slipped out of tempo constantly. "He War" won't need as much help, but to build on that exposure the video will have to distract from the song's unpolished glimmer, cherished by analog indie rockers but anathema to the airwaves. Failing a glossy short, look for a new round of Gap ads.

"Free" is a moment of daring, incorporating a deadened drum machine snare with urgent (think Foreigner) strumming. Marshall scribbles a Crayola-colored daydream recollection of the phony-tough cock rock that ruled the radios of her youth as more attuned, sensitive kids felt their way in the dark. It's the only song on You Are Free to risk disaster, openly toying with SK-1 keys and a guitar lead unintentionally pinched from the Talking Heads' tongue-in-cheek "Wild Wild Life".

The Cat Power we've come to know, love, and predict finally delivers that glistening, trebly rasp on "Good Woman", a devastating country ballad backed by Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis and a compressed chorale of pre-teen girls. Contrary to rumors, Eddie Vedder's presence on You Are Free is both appropriate and gentle given his unmistakable coo. You'll recognize it-- and for anyone still mired in divisive indie squabbling, his breathy moan could ruin the record-- but the two duets with Vedder are the strongest of too many funereally morose dirges that bind You Are Free.

And just like that, it's 1995. The playful backbeat chorus and toy piano of "Speak for Me" transport anyone who lived through Pavement's ascendancy back to the breathless expectancy in advance of Wowee Zowee, something Cat Power also felt: She's covered "We Dance" since that record came out. "Speak for Me" is followed by another throwback, this time to Chan's low-fidelity roots: Her cover of Michael Hurley's two-chord country blues number "Werewolf" is abbreviated from any rambling, epic version you may have heard in concert, and though it's helped by David Campbell's string arrangements (reminiscent of Carter Burwell's Fargo soundtrack), it could lay in next to anything from Myra Lee. "Fool" makes a perfect counterpoint to "Werewolf", in terms of Chan's maturation where songwriting, production and subject matter are concerned. Her disdain is getting personal, her subject matter less ephemeral and referential, as she scolds rich Americans driven by wanderlust and entitlement. With haunting harmonies and a teasing pause, the chorus tugs the heartstrings of twenty-something confusion.

For the stunning variety and intrigue of its first eight songs, the second half of You Are Free is somewhat spotty. As the old adage goes, ten songs is an album, and in this case fourteen is a few too many; some of these closing tracks should have been kept back for B-sides. The overwrought, repetitive "Half of You" is a less meaningful country pastiche than the searing Western blues heard earlier on the record, and "Maybe Not"-- though great on its own-- is basically an alternate piano take on "Fool". Chan's been playing the frayed Joni Mitchell card in advance of You Are Free, and it's starting to wear thin, though she probably thinks she's just begun to explore this mode. The two real missteps here are "Baby Doll"-- a too-simple nylon string plod-- and a fantastic but hiss-coated cover of John Lee Hooker's "Crawlin' Black Spider" reappropriated as "Keep on Runnin'". Again, the cover is outstanding on its own merits, but interrupts the album, forestalling the icy chill of its stupendous finale, "Evolution".

The monotonous, glacial insistence of "Evolution"-- Cat Power's proper duet with Eddie Vedder-- is as out of place as the album's opener, a perfect bookend and resolution to a record that almost effortlessly shifts between incongruous styles. Vedder appears in hushed baritone, nicely meshing with the piano line and allowing Chan's tongue-tied, sedated lilt to sit on top. "Evolution" is as poetic a retelling of moral apocalypse as you're likely to come by, insofar as it ignores melodramatic conviction and the temporal impulse to wax politic. This is pure Hemingway.

You Are Free is full of arresting, serene beauty, but as an album-- as that quantifiable object-- it has composite failings. Sans a handful of lesser inclusions and tributes, the imaginary, shorter version of You Are Free is flawless. An unknown singer would take the apologist underground by storm with a record like this, but fame brings expectation and accountability, and certain people are going to be disappointed for the wrong reasons. You Are Free is not a perfect record, but it contains one, detailing the sound of American regret with a singular voice, scrutinized only because of its owner.

-Chris Ott, February 18th, 2003