Live Review: Cat Power

Anyone who knows anything about the mercurial Cat Power (Chan Marshall) knows how capricious she can be.

Gone are the days in which she mooned the crowd and told them to fuck off (or simply left the stage herself), but there's still wriggle room for the unexpected. 

She wandered onto the stage 20 minutes late and promptly left again (she had forgotten her lyrics sheets). You wouldn't be alone in thinking that she would not return. Likewise, it's folly to expect her to replicate your favourite song just the way you want them. Case in point: Colors And The Kids. Her six-plus-minute sadcore opus was hacked down to a modest three-and-a-half minutes and the hypnotic, looping piano riff/verse combo was replaced by one that could've been mistaken for a Norah Jones cover. Marshall wandered around the stage, giving her band the spotlight. She hid in the music. From the moment she stepped up to the mic, Marshall was gesturing for the desk to turn the reverb up and the volume down. It seemed she wanted to disappear.

She couldn't, though, and Marshall was fascinating to watch. You couldn't take your eyes off her. Were we waiting for a car crash? Were we trying to hear her better? Were we spellbound by her husky timbre? Yes. All three. She bewitched us as her spectral Southern masterpiece Moon Pix - performed in full tonight - manifested as some strange, haunting facsimile of what we knew. No Sense was breathtaking. The gently swelling string section worked in unison with Marshall's shy, melancholic affectations. The steady push towards its crescendo gathered energy, releasing it in an awkward tipping-of-the-wave moment, jumbled guitar picking and improvised vocal timings and pitch shifting tumbling down towards its last sputtering notes.

Dirty Three OGs (and Marshall's recording partners for Moon Pix) Mick Turner and Jim White were on deck to provide a comforting sort of fidelity to the source material. Turner was content rambling through each arrangement, with mixed results. White provided some welcome camouflage for Marshall with some spontaneous percussive flourishes and extended freakouts, swamping the air with noise when Marshall's voice wasn't up to it.

The small encore of piano-driven material (The Greatest, Good Woman and I Don't Blame You) was possibly the strongest stretch in terms of musicality, but there was something about the glaring vulnerability and the searing, naked, emotional complexity of her main set that made it far more memorable. She forced us to meet her on her terms. Marshall reluctantly commanded the room.