Twenty years after it first drifted out of Memphis like cigarette smoke curling through a neon-lit bar, The Greatest is returning in a new anniversary edition that feels less like a nostalgia exercise and more like a reminder of just how singular Cat Power remains. Released via Matador Records on 10 July, the 20th anniversary reissue arrives with the album’s original pink foil artwork restored alongside a pink vinyl pressing, pulling one of the 2000s’ most quietly influential records back into focus.
Pre-order it HERE.
Recorded in Memphis with members of the legendary Hi Rhythm section, the album marked a turning point for Chan Marshall. After the bruised intimacy of earlier records like Moon Pix and You Are Free, she leaned into Southern soul textures without losing the emotional ambiguity that made her songwriting feel so exposed in the first place. Recruiting guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, bassist Leroy “Flick” Hodges and drummer Steve Potts gave the record its humid pulse, but Marshall never disappears into homage. Instead, she bends Memphis soul into something lonelier and more nocturnal.
The reissue lands alongside a world tour where Marshall will perform the album in full across North America, the UK and Europe, extending a recent creative resurgence that has also included the release of the three-track Redux EP. Featuring reinterpretations of Nothing Compares 2 U and Try Me, plus a newly recorded version of Could We, the release underlines how Marshall continues to revisit her catalogue not as museum pieces, but as living songs capable of changing shape.
Few artists from the indie underground of the 1990s have evolved as restlessly as Marshall. From the stripped-back unease of Dear Sir and Myra Lee through to the widescreen soul of The Greatest and the electronic experimentation of Sun, her catalogue has always resisted settling into one identity. Two decades on, The Greatest still sounds untethered from trends, moving with the slow confidence of a record that understood exactly what it wanted to be.
Go HERE for tour dates.
