Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has directed the music video for Cat Power’s interpretation of The Pogues’ 1985 song “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” off her new album Covers.
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“As someone who deeply loves Cat Power’s music, getting to collaborate with Chan [Marshall] on this video was like a dream come true,” said Jarmusch in a statement about working on the visual around the song, originally written by Pogues frontman Shane Macgowan. “She’s so inspiring to me, of course as an artist, but she’s also just such an extraordinary person.”
Jarmusch, whose career spans more than 40 years with films including Stranger Than Paradise, Night on Earth, Ghost Dog, and The Way of the Samurai, has also worked with artists like Neil Young, Tom Waits, The Clash’s Joe Strummer, Iggy Pop, and more. Jarmursch has also composed music for his films, released three albums with Dutch lutist Jozef van Wissem and is also a member of the avant-rock band SQÜRL.
Filmed through a prismatic frame, the video, shot at Blonde Studios in New York City, shows Marshall in a dream-like airy state, with visions of her playing the Mellotron. Marshall’s eerier version of “A Pair of Brown Eyes” is complemented by Jarmusch’s pearlescent captures on film.
Produced entirely by Marshall, Covers follows Cat Power’s 10th album Wanderer and features covers of Frank Ocean’s “Bad Religion,” Dead Man’s Bones’ “Pa Pa Power”—the latter a song Marshall had been playing live since 2012—and other with re-imaginings of songs by Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, The Replacements, and Lana Del Rey.
“I play covers all the time,” said Marshall in an earlier statement, “and it’s important for me to record them because it’s what me and my listeners both get.”
