CAT POWER The Greatest Matador ****

It's taken a long time, but it turns out to have been time well worth taking for Chan "Cat Power" Marshall. Marshall has always found comfort in diversions, something anyone who has witnessed her haphazard and insecure approach to live performances will know all too well. Few could have predicted, then, that her seventh album would have turned out like this. Recorded in Memphis, with some of those legendary soulmen who filled in the gaps for Al Green as her backing band, The Greatest is the most unlikely soul gem you will hear this year.

Given Marshall's southern roots, it's a little bit amazing that no one thought her smoky voice would be ideally suited to this sort of lazy, hazy country-soul tapping and shuffling before now. More than anything else - even the confidence, which is noticeable on every level - it's the sound gliding from each track that will make you hum. There's much to admire, whether it's the romantic strains that push Where Is My Love along or the simple, gentle wash of the title track. All the songs were completed in one or two takes, so there was little time for fooling around with arrangements, meaning the songs had to be sturdy to begin with.

A piece of work that leaves everything else she's done to date far, far behind, The Greatest will haunt and seduce all who hear it.

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Jim Carroll