Cat Power Barfs Up A Hairball
Well, that was weird. We like the Cat Power, don't get us wrong. But, in retrospect, we would have skipped Chan Marshall's set at the Showbox last night. We wish she had. It all started with her complaining about wearing size 26 pants when she's really a 28. "I fucked up," she said, dryly. (We thought that was banter but she kept hitching her pants up all set long, even unzipping them onstage, a move some heartily applauded. She was dressed all in black, it turned out.)
Then she mentioned several times that she felt like throwing up, broke off a song because she was worried about passing out, left the stage hurriedly, reappeared, mimed throwing up, sang two songs, started thumping her chest and making faces, and said she couldn't go on, maybe it was food poisoning.
She's touring with the Memphis Rhythm Band for her album The Greatest, a livelier, more audience-friendly album that resonates more with the drunken, hooting, college-girl set. The Memphis Rhythm Band has a rootsy, bar-band quality (except for their trumpet, who could blow), and their sound didn't exactly support what we're gonna call the Cat Power idiom. Marshall's vocals were buried in the mix, and her taffy-stretched, mournful cadences were stepped up so we could all clap along.
She sang quite a bit of The Greatest, and threw in covers of "House of the Rising Sun," "Satisfaction," and Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." (Which is where the show ended.) Her attention was clearly wandering: some songs were delivered so fiercely it scared us, but we also thought we saw her trying to remember words. And then, as Seattlest Audrey mentions in another context, there's the Joe Cocker impression: "While she sang, Chan did a little shadowboxing, jigged, and the chicken dance."
We were thinking about Joe anyway because Marshall is not just a singer, she's an enormously talented interpreter. Sure, it's easy to fall in love with that breathy, strangely full-toned voice, but her slip-n-slide phrasing, her wriggling cadences, demand you pay attention. (The performance anxiety, the OCD-tinged tics, that's not interpretation, we're guessing.) Here's her November 20 concert (sans running commentary on nausea) -- listen for yourself.
