Cat Power / Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
Cat Power finds real zeal
Words Ash Dosanjh
“I’m glad you came back,” says Chan Marshall pacing the blackened stage of Shepherd’s Bush Empire. “I’m glad you came back,” she repeats as everyone, including me, anticipates a tsunami of disaster to ensue.
I say disaster because, for some, the original Cat Power experience - the one where her femininity and fragility are punctuated by her falling apart emotionally and physically with every live performance - is excruciatingly painful to watch.
Had it not been for the fact that her records are astounding - her vocals completely compelling and enticing - I would have given up on her, her self-hatred, alcoholism and general flakiness a long time ago.
But tonight, performing her latest LP of covers, Jukebox, Marshall has transformed herself into the performer that I always hoped she’d become - one that didn’t scare from the crowd, but instead sang with real zeal and enthusiasm (for a whole song) and, above all, looked like she was having some fun with it.
With her backing band, Dirty Delta Blues, she relays impassioned versions of Billie Holliday’s ‘Don’t Explain’ and George Jackson’s ‘Aretha, Sing One For Me’, that leave me in awe of her ethereal talent. And, as she strides back and forth like some kind of mime artist, complete with Karl Lagerfeld gloves, white pumps and black shirt, waistcoat and jeans, it’s obvious that Marshall has left her hot mess days behind her.
To those wayward reviewers who feel that now Marshall has cleaned up her act she has somehow lost the ability to feel empathy for the covers she performs tonight, I take exception. Compacting her style and delivery as some kind of formula where her sobriety plus enthusiasm somehow equals insincerity is insulting to say the least.
Cat Power was so good last night that I no longer have those pangs of hate that had surged through my body every time, bar the first, I’d seen her live.
You’re glad I came back, Chan? I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.
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