Cat Power

Band: Cat Power
Sound: Blues, folk, and soul from a melodic chanteuse.
Album: Jukebox
Label: Matador

Charlyn "Chan" Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, traveled throughout her childhood in the American South, readying herself for the career in music she was destined to stumble into. There has been prodding all along the way; Marshall attempted to give up performing altogether before the songs that were to become 1998’s Moon Pix forced their way out of her in the middle of the night. The sparse arrangements and haunting, ethereal vocals on that recorded won critical acclaim, so much so that it became clear Marshall was going to be cajoled into remaining a musician indefinitely. 

While Cat Power’s discography is a collection of varied styles and approaches that have been generally successful, Marshall’s tours have been mired in inconsistency. Her approach to a live set has been extremely unconventional, possibly due to the experimental musical influences of her youth and certainly fueled by a dependence on alcohol she broke just after 2006’s The Greatest. Since then, Marshall has assembled the Dirty Delta Blues Band, recorded a second collection of covers and taken an increasingly confident demeanor in her onstage work. “I’d never really noticed that they liked me before,” Marshall said in a New York Times Interview.

Up until recently, Marshall was known to stop songs mid-performance and apologize for their poor renditions, blend songs oddly into each other, and occasional quit abruptly without reason. Her sobriety has helped quell her stage fright; in the past two years, Marshall has delivered, arguably, the best live performances of her career.