Hitting Back

Chan Marshall is a fascinating woman. She's intense, brassy, a motor-mouth. She's fiercely independent, kind and worldly. Yet her sentences are derailed often by new thoughts, apologies and half-hearted attempts at self-censorship, making her fragility painfully clear. So too is just how hard she is on Cat Power.

Unconventional from the outset, Marshall recorded her first two albums during the same session in a New York basement in 1994. Though little more than gritty vocals accompanied by guitar and percussion, Dear Sir (1995) and Myra Lee (1996) established the Georgia native as an innovative narrator literally singing to her emotional strengths and weaknesses. Maintaining the raw charm of her lyrical style, musically Marshall has continually evolved; whether blending blues, folk, country and punk, incorporating pop vocal hooks and piano, or delving into Memphis soul, she has never been scared to push boundaries.

With a reputation of being consistently inconsistent – erratic stage performances, battles with creative demons, alcohol and mental health – Marshall's tumultuous career path seemed to have settled with the September release of Sun. Though following a successful tour of America, Marshall fell ill to the recurring condition angioedema, which causes rapid swelling of the skin and airways, and promptly postponed her European tour. Recuperating on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, Marshall conveys her disappointment.

“It's a long story and no one fuckin' believes me and it's very difficult, very painful to do interviews any more actually,” she admits. “But everybody knows really how well I've been trying to work; I try hard, I've been trying to work and I've worked so hard on this record and I worked so hard on everything for this record and then ended up with my oesophagus closing up because of an allergy that happens when you get stressed. It's not a normal thing; normally people have heart attacks but that's what the doctors say was my next step, was like a – what do you call it? – stroke or heart attack. I've like, blah, blah, blah,” Marshall sighs, carefully considering what to say next. “I feel like I have to really protect myself with the press now because of the lack of professionalism and like the cool story, you know, like because I was in an institution or whatever from stress before; people like to think I was a drug addict or something. You know what I'm sayin'? Sorry – I have a lot to protect… I'm doin' my best to be calm and try to, you know, do my job and try to reach people and connect and be fuckin' happy and healthy you know.”

Following the 2008 covers album Jukebox, Sun is Marshall's first release of original material since the southern soul of The Greatest placed her in the more accessible realms of singer-songwriter territory in 2006. A sharp departure from both, Sun is largely based on new and self-produced experimentations with electronic instrumentation. It's also a shining testament to Marshall's creative ability.

“I said, 'Fuck it, I'm gonna go and be like one of these fancy bands' – you know there's the fancy bands that have fancy places like studios that they own and they go and they write songs in their studio,” she says of casting aside her simple demo method of recording to cassette when work began on Sun. “So I went in there and I played the songs that I wrote for somebody who's real close to me, and I've never done that before. What he told me broke my heart. He said, 'But it sounds like old Cat Power'. These are not full [songs] – these are like skeletons. Every song on Sun was a skeleton just the same but with different instrumentation. These songs I played for this guy were guitar/vocal, piano/vocal, so it crushed me. I fuckin' got out of the car and got my CDs out and I left – I didn't talk to anybody for eight months and I went back into the studio and I had all my guitars and I did not touch them, I did not open them up yet, I didn't look at the piano, I didn't have the piano tuned. There was a drum set there and all these synthesisers and keyboards. I said, 'Turn 'em on, plug 'em in, put a mic on 'em, mic those drums – let's get real mics everywhere for the drums, blah, blah, blah. Let's go – just record anything I fuckin' do'. And then that's what happened. I started editing; I didn't want to touch a guitar, or a piano, because if this fuckin' friend of mine is telling me that what I do is old hat, like it's not good enough, for what? What is good enough? This is what I do, is it good enough? So I was completely fuckin' pissed off…” she chuckles. “Anyway, it was a long process and I was, you know, I'm very – what's the word? – rebellious, because of the way I was raised. And I am so independent – that's why I got sick. That's also why I made the record sound the way it did because I got told – I can't tell you how many emails – I needed a producer. And that's such an insult, 'cause nobody knew what I had in my mind, what I wanted to do with those original songs [when] the person told me, judged me, calculated against me. Like, that wasn't the record. I made a mistake in opening myself to somebody who I trusted and that's what I'm trying to get over, is that if I make the choice to open myself up to someone I trust and their reaction isn't what I want or hope, that's what I'm learning now – to not take it personally and just realise I don't give a shit.

“I am too old now to care about what, like, the press are saying,” Marshall continues, mimicking current rumours. “'Oh she cancelled a European tour because maybe she's on drugs, or an alcoholic, or she looked like shit on tour' [to] which I wanna give a, wave a gigantic fuck you flag because nobody knows that I was in the emergency room or a three-night hotel – so like hospital, I call it the hotel – a three-night hospital stay right before the concert, so fuck off!” she spits defiantly. “I wanna say fuck you to every journalist who judged me by the way that I looked. A journalist, my first show [of the Sun tour], he said, he was even talking about my body language – like how it was wrong. I got his name; I could get his number. It's just like, I'm gonna send him a giant bag of shit and just be like, 'You're terrible at your job, you're not even a true witness, you know nothing about me and you're just full of judgement'. He should have been fired… Like there's the economy and all the fucking problems we have, the environment, you know what I mean? The last thing we need is somebody down my throat because I look like shit. What the fucker doesn't know but I was, you know, tryin' to survive…”

Marshall's healing process – a multipronged attack involving health specialists, natural therapies and abstinence from alcohol, cigarettes, red meat and stress – has coincided with a shift in confidence in her own artistic ability. Given the vitality and widespread acclaim of Sun, the future has never looked brighter for Cat Power.

“I'm proud of this record; I've never been really proud of anything that I've ever done…” Marshall surprisingly confesses. “I liked Jukebox but I wasn't necessarily ever proud of it and I'm still not proud of anything I've done; [Sun is] the first time I've ever felt a sense of pride and accomplishment. Maybe I feel pride when I deliver a good concert maybe ten times a year, and it all makes it worth it, that connection, you know, with the universe at that time with everybody there like we're all in the same house together, you know, movin' on the same plane. That's what I do this for, live. The recording and the whole message that I care about this earth and all that shit, yeah, and then sonically getting to the point that I wanted to be at to release, I'm proud of myself and that says a lot about where I was in my life before I got sick. I didn't think, I never could imagine I'd be in hospital. My record got released number ten in the United States,” she says flatly. “I got no manager, I got no producer, got no fuckin' band, got no – you know what I'm sayin'? And I got top ten. To me that's it, that's like I did a great accomplishment and maybe me getting sick, subconsciously my body was like, 'Look, see? You did it. Fuck off! Drink some water, go do some yoga, go see your neurologist and a cardiologist and take care of yourself', 'cause I wanna live, and I wanna be a part of my future and my present. And you know, I wanna be around to help make a change in this fucked up world if I can. I've got a lot of life to live…

Cat Power will be playing the following dates:

Monday 25 February - Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide SA
Tuesday 26 February - Piaf, Perth WA
Tuesday 26 - Wednesday 27 February - Perth International Arts Festival, Perth WA
Friday 1 March - Cardiff Panthers, Cardiff NSW
Saturday 2 March - Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
Tuesday 5 March - The Tivoli, Fortitude Valley QLD
Thursday 7 March - Forum, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 9 - Monday 11 March - Golden Plains Festival, Meredith VIC