About a year ago, I bought a record. Not a big deal in the slightest, right? But, I suppose what happened that day is what keeps you coming back, keeps you buying, searching. I'd read a review of Cat Power's debut lp Myra Lee; and looking for it -- in what I thought was a vein search at the time -- I found a different record, a follow-up. I paid the $28. And had no idea the pandora's box I was opening up. What Would The Community Think, the album that I found, is as much a companion as a record. An experience. The music of Cat Power, while not inherently special in its composition, is consuming to say the least. It quickens your breath, squeezes your chest, runs a shiver down your spine, and tightens around your neck with passion. It is something to spend quality time with... I think I listened to this record every day for about, ohh, six months. It only seemed to grow with each listen. Cat Power are the true essence of music, the true sound of a soul. Honest. Naive. Simple. Emotional.
The child of Chan Marshall, Cat Power exist in a similar -- although not yet as developed -- realm to Will Oldham's Palace and Bill Callahan's Smog; an entirely unpretentious musical plain, oblivious to the ways of the rock world (the sheer scope of each of these acts opens up debate that true art can only be achieved when developed away from the music industry).
Through Marshall's southern-Gothic imagery and textured, doleful words; and the almost random feeling of the production and accompaniment -- one thing is for sure: Cat Power are unforgettable. Tim Foljahn (Two Dollar Guitar) wraps drifting tones, sporadic shards of interference, and caressive strokes of guitar in and around Marshall's unbelievably simple, but all-the-while epiphanistic tunes. Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) takes command of infrequent, violent percussion sounds. Piano is thrown -- once again sporadically -- in and around the songs; and some of the most peaceful moments on both What Would The Community Think (Matador) and the more abrasive Myra Lee (Smells Like Records) are haunted by screaming, wailing fuzztone. Others are merely enhanced by the most delicate reverb-tones -- so sweet, melting, and gracious that you couldn't call them feedback. And then there's Marshall's voice. Frail yet powerful. Totally commanding as it seems to both wail and whisper at once.
But somewhere along the journey, songs that were acoustic simplicities from a wispy southern gal become the sole property of distress. They seem gentle, at first, but this is but of the space left between instrumentation, and the silence that inhabits Marshall's music. While the space gives the impression of quiet, each instrument is ringing at boiling volume. In the nightmarish Water & Air -- the standout moment from What Would The Community Think -- Marshall's guitar rings out gently over the one same delicate progression. Cellos vex repetitively like rolling clouds, tribal bass drum rings out painfully like distant rolls of thunder. And Marshall is left but to wail over the top. On King Rides By, the way she cries "I need your love, more than you ever know" makes the words sound so much more than their simple language could ever offer; the same happening in The Coat Is Always On, when voices ramble schizophrenically "you always laugh when she wants to hear it, a lot of times you just starve..." On Myra Lee's Ice Water, she proves herself adept at sidestepping melodrama, when she croons "I am so angry" in a sweet, settled, and matter-of-fact way.
Talking to Chan (pronounced 'Shawn') was a wonderful experience. Incredibly chatty, and at times just as vague with her conversation as her lyrics tend to be; we talk for about twenty minutes -- mostly about dreams and the power they wield over both her and myself -- before we even turn onto the subject of Cat Power. "I suppose I better ask you some rock questions, huh" I offer. "Noooo", she groans, laughing, "I hate rock." And she's not being facetious. Marshall refuses to call what she does 'songwriting', downplays the idea of her being an artist, and several times shows all too earnestly her nervousness at playing live.
Talking about the two shows she's playing in Melbourne, with Jim & Mick from the Dirty Three, the facts seem to set on Marshall. A trip that was once a holiday in New Zealand followed by the recording of a new album in Australia, now includes some shows. "Now I'm getting scared," she laughs, "I haven't been scared coming down to Australia; I haven't really thought about it much doing the interview, we've just been talking. But now it's just dawned on me that I have to play live." Now she's almost singing with trepidation: "I'm getting nervous!"
And in this interview, I kind of get the Cat Power history in longform...
i) Marshall recalls how she wanted to be a drummer when she first heard the Go-Gos as a kid; and how she still loves playing drums, but every time she records herself playing "it sounds so spazzy." ii) She remembers moving in with her father at 15, desperately wanting to play to his piano, and not being allowed; "He was like an old hippy -- you must love every man, and all this fucking stuff... but then I wasn't allowed to touch his piano. I mean what am I going do to it? I'm 15; I know how to put on mascara. If I could do something so delicate so carefully I'm sure I won't hurt the piano." iii) She details her first ever rock show, in which she sat out the back while her drunken boy friends had a "guitar war". iv) And she remembers her first solo live shows, that occurred after she had moved to New York.
"My friends kept saying they wanted me to play by myself, and I thought they were out of their minds, there was no way that I could do it. Through the year they kept saying 'blah, blah, blah', and I just kept saying 'no way'. So then, one night, they phoned up and said: 'we've booked a show for you. If you show up, you show up. If you don't you don't.' And I thought that was funny, I thought 'no fucking way', and I didn't call them back. And then I looked at the paper, and at CBGB it said 'Cat Power'." After that first show, Marshall came home to find a message from a guy that she knew called Gerard, who she hadn't realised was actually Gerard Cosloy, co-boss of Matador Records. He offered her a show opening for Liz Phair. Chan did it so she could earn $200. After doing a soundcheck at the show, two guys came up to her realising that she was all alone, and invited her out to dinner. Halfway into the outing, when they started talking about 'Thurston', Marshall realised one of them was Steve Shelley, "like during dinner."
"After that I was so intimidated of Steve -- this guy, I couldn't look at him, I couldn't talk to him, I basically left early and couldn't speak to him. I was so embarrassed, nervous, I was younger, whatever. I felt so much younger then. But anyway, then I play my show. And that was like one of my most favourite shows that I've ever done, ever."
After she played her set that night, at a gig in which she wasn't even billed on, Marshall went outside to look for a friend of hers. "I go outside, and all these boys come up and are like 'can I please get an interview with you?', 'can I please get your autograph?', 'can I get my picture taken with you?', and I was looking at them just totally amazed. And one of them had a little microphone, like a Tandy microphone up to my mouth. They were really young, nice; just young guys, whatever. And I look at them, and then I realised; and I said.. 'I'm not Liz Phair'. And they looked at me, and then they just totally walked away. It was then I realised that these people had never even heard Liz Phair. You know what I mean? They were just blown out of proportion because of the expectations of Liz Phair, that they thought that I was Liz Phair. So then I felt like shit! It was like the encore didn't mean anything."
As we continue to chat about the history of Cat Power, I discover that such extreme happenings have not been uncommon. How defiantly 'rock' some of them are was perhaps a little more surprising. That's where France comes into things. Cat Power have sold more records in France than in the rest of the world. Around 20,000. When going to France, Marshall explains: "it's so much more difficult, it's like a totally different step." So much so, she actually believes me when I jokingly tell her that East River Pipe's Superstar In France was written about her. So then Marshall tells her definitive Paris rock story.
At one show, after she'd played, these two guys get up onstage, come over and ask for her autograph. "And I was just like, you know, whatever; I was really embarrassed by the whole thing. So I sign these autographs for them, and then I look up, and like the whole stage is like filling up with these kids, these young kids. I swear half the audience got up on stage. And they were just shoving their arms in front of me, pieces of paper, napkins, whatever, trying to get me to sign it. And it's that kind of thing which really makes me feel nervous. When people are treating me like that. You know, as soon as I leave the bar, that's not a reality. And I didn't even see it as something that I've done, it was more like a chain reaction. You know, two kids want my autograph, so the rest of the kids want it to..."
"When I'm treated like that, when things like that happen at shows; that's when I start getting aggressive, and violent, and upset, whatever. Because you know I don't feel special. I don't feel unique. I don't feel like an artist. I'm just this person, and I can't cope with that kind of pressure. It makes me really pissed off, and I destroy the show, or whatever; that's when I start deliberately like sabotaging the performance. And that hurts me. It really hurts me. So you know, after those kind of shows, I'm like a total wreck. I never want to play again."
It's this kind of honest, emotional, personal sentiment that -- paradoxically -- does indeed make Marshall, and her music, indelibly special. (DEC 97)