Cat Power - Colston Hall, Bristol - 9/6/08
5/5
By: Sian Norris
I was pretty nervous about going to see Cat Power, despite my obvious excitement. Stories of unfinished gigs, drunken forgetting of lyrics and crippling stage fright had made me trepiditious, especially seeing as I was going with Cat Power's new biggest fan - my mum.
But I had no need to worry. She was outstanding.
Accompanied by the Dirty Delta Blues Band - keyboards, drums, guitar and bass, one of them being a fella from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion who isn't Jon Spencer - Chan Marshall sang her heart out. It is disconcerting seeing such a big and almost ancient sounding voice coming from such a slight and fey woman. But her vocals do have a quality of the past to them, resonant with a cigarette smoking, whisky drinking thirties cabaret singer, or a pioneer singing spirituals. There's even a prayer like, religious quality apparent when singing lines with such weight as "Lord, help the poor and the needy". It's timeless, a delivery that can swing between painful and beautiful with a millisecond's notice, often managing both simultaneously.
A lot of the songs came from Jukebox, her latest album which radically reinterprets classics such as 'New York, New York' and 'Ramblin (Wo)Man', as well as adding in some new covers, including an eclectic and fascinating performance of Fleetwood Mac's 'Dreams' that Stevie Nicks herself would have heartily approved off. Her voice, in all its beauty, can also be tinged with desperation and a needy longing that grips the listener, even when her tones are sensuously wrapped around a song as peaceful as the final track 'The Greatest' (the title tune from her fantastic, sixth album).
The stage fright is still there, apparent in her tendency to stay on the side of the stage, although she did often come out into the middle, dancing and writhing, teasing her keyboardist and imploring the audience to dance. (They didn't. I was annoyed.) I was pleased in a way though. I don't want to go to a gig and listen to loads of talking. I want to hear her sing, and sing she did.
An interval saw the band play a lovely lo fi electronica song which I really enjoyed, lots of rising and falling beats and cool easy keyboards. And here, the bastards started talking. The Colston Hall audience didn't understand either dancing or listening, it seemed to me.
The highlight of my evening was hearing her cover of 'Don't Explain', one of my all time favourite Billie Holiday songs, and as those who know me know, Billie is my favourite singer of all time. I'm very protective of people covering her music, however Chan is masterful. No other singer around right now captures the dichotomy that made Billie so fascinating, a beautiful and yet almost painful delivery that marked every performance as special. They are not straight covers; even the lyrics are amended to add the personal to them. It is the most desperately lonely and longing song, as full of a degrading forgiveness as it is an impossible loveliness.
Marvellous.
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