CAT POWER - LOS ANGELES 2018 (Big O)

 CAT POWER

RADIO KCRW LOS ANGELES 2018

Big O

Nice set at broadcast quality from Chan Marshall as ever the highly distinctive and attractive voice and power of her singing and writing remains ever fascinating

Cat Power Live in KCRW LA 2018

From the time of the release of Wanderer

Big O says:

“Wanderer”… contains, in the abstract poetic fragments of any Cat Power album, the reasons Marshall could not just pack it all in. For one, she is still too vibrant a songwriter, with too extraordinary a voice and too many feelings, to stop now. An eternally exposed nerve who refuses to present as fully healed or whole, even in the era of self-care and commodified feminism, Marshall has always sounded as if she’d seen some things. Now, at 46, she truly has the life experience to back up her songs, steeped as they are in the soul and blues traditions, a rarity in indie rock. In 11 spare tracks, Marshall seems confident, at last, in her identity as a rootless seeker and storyteller, firm in the instability of her atypical existence.

But [her ex-label] Matador rejected the album.

“They said, do it again, do it over,” Marshall explained. (Her former manager, Andy Slater, confirmed that Matador told him “Wanderer” was “not good enough, not strong enough to put out.” The album was eventually released by Domino.)

“[Slater’s] taught me that I have a lot to be proud of,” Marshall said, noting that in the past she was just thankful to be working, more concerned with getting from point A to point B than her legacy. “It’s not pretentious that I’m an artist. It’s not corny to sing songs that maybe other people think are depressing. It’s not embarrassing.”

Marshall said she’d received the same mandate from Matador during recording as she had for “Sun,” her previous album from 2012. “It was like, ‘We need hits!’” she said. “And I did it - I got Top 10. I did the best I could to give them hits” on “Sun,” using bright synths and more modern sounds.

But to Marshall, the label had always represented artistic freedom. “Looking back, I know they were using me,” she said, recalling a Matador executive playing her an album by Adele and telling her that that was how a record was supposed to sound. “I understood that I was a product,” she said, “and I always thought I was a person.”

Marshall said she did not alter the music after the label change, but did add a track: “Woman,” featuring Lana Del Rey (whom Marshall opened for on the European leg of her LA to the Moon Tour), which in many ways became the defiant, upbeat centerpiece of an understated album. Asked if the track, which has received more than a million YouTube views in a month, was a middle finger to her ex-label, Marshall demurred: “Thank you for asking, but no comment.”