As part of Amazon’s monthly $5 MP3 album deals for January 2013, Cat Power‘s Sun is on sale for only $5.

The songwriting on this record is just fantastic. If you were to come across any one of the album’s eleven tracks individually, they would immediately make you want to know more about the artist who created them. Sun is a labor of love from an immensely talented singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer, whose real name is Chan Marshall. With the exception of some mixing duties, Ms. Marshall handles every bit of Sun herself. Tunes like album opener “Cherokee,” the album’s title track, and the fantastic harmonies on “Ruin” are showcases for the passion she possesses for her craft. The 11-minute empowerment epic “Nothin’ But Time” swells and falls over shiny synths and thundering rhythms, and features background vocals by an almost Johnny Cash-sounding Iggy Pop. His gruff vocals offer an exhilarating counterpart to Marshall’s sweet breathy melody. By the time you reach the hip-hop-ish closer “Peace and Love,” you will have found that Sun is full of warm and welcome surprises.

Browse all 2,000 albums on sale this month for only $5 each.

Track Listing

1. Cherokee
2. Sun
3. Ruin
4. 3,6,9
5. Always On My Own
6. Real Life
7. Human Being
8. Manhattan
9. Silent Machine
10. Nothin’ But Time
11. Peace And Love
12. King Rides By (Bonus Track)

Note – when you purchase MP3s through Amazon, it stores your purchases to Amazon’s Cloud Drive; from there you can stream the music right from their online player. Also, if you have a Kindle Fire, your MP3 purchases will automatically be available for you to stream on your device. All your purchases are backed up and available for you to download at any time. You can download the files to your computer to load to an MP3 device and to your iTunes account if you have one. If you’d like to gift these MP3 purchases, you can – just click the “Give album or song as gift” button on the right on the product page. From there you enter the recipient’s email address and then select either specific songs to gift or the entire album.