Cat Power/ Chan Marshall- genius or fruitloop?

Also a shout out to Manhattan on her last album which is one of her best tracks. It's so simple in some ways but it has so much momentum.

I saw her solo circa You Are Free in an art gallery where she I think was not in a good way and played three songs in a row on her Danelectro then three in a row on piano then back and forth, with barely a break or any talking. Then I saw her later on The Greatest/Jukebox era soul revue thing where she seemed in way better form. Musically I preferred the former but it felt a bit weird enjoying it even then. I think if I was older, I would have felt even more uncomfortable.

saw her twice circa moon pix; one time was a complete shambles that was embarrassing to witness, the other was utterly riveting and fantastic

iirc having jim white glowering behind her was beneficial to the latter; glad they are working together again

I'm not a production guy or someone who thinks about it much but Sun is one of the worst-sounding records I think I've heard. Whatever she does next I hope it isn't with whoever produced that. I was sure it was etienne de crecy but google isn't showing up results for that.

it was Philippe Zdar who mixed it, that's what I'm thinking of.

Horrible.

iirc her label more or less compelled her to work with a producer just to finally get the record out? not sure how it came to be zdar tho

saw her twice circa moon pix; one time was a complete shambles that was embarrassing to witness, the other was utterly riveting and fantastic

the Moon Pix era show I saw was riveting for the first half and a disaster for the 2nd

I hadn't heard the album or anything and was like "wtf is going on here"

you don't have to think as hard.
may i request slightly harder thinking so the cliche doesn't sound so sexist?

ha. well, she seemed like someone who was happy to putter around the house, but was still a bit bored by the end of the day, so she gets a little drunk and then tries to sing and can't quite cut it. she wasn't very good. I think this could apply to men as well.

She had a lot of nice things to say about Teenie Hodges, so she's got good taste in guitarists.

when a 46-year-old bored housewife claims she's recorded "nine feminist bangers," i pay attention

in other words, she was unprofessional.

I like all of her albums, really. You Are Free is my favourite. I rate Sun quite highly too - anyone else have anything nice to say about that one?
Both of her covers albums are pretty great as well.

The Greatest might be my least fave, it sounds a little cheesy at times. I've only seen her once, it was either the tour for that album or one shortly thereafter, where she played a lot of songs from it with a band, and I didn't think much of that concert at all. I had understood that she has a reputation for unpredictable live shows but that time sounded very formulaic to me, lacking heart, with a band that sounded like a bunch of studio players without any passion.

Unfortunately, I can't help but get a gnawing demon in my head whispering "Vaccine truther!" whenever I think of her these days. Luckily I manage to silence that demon enough to subsequently still enjoy listening to her records.

Edd you're coming off a little patronising in your comments - I don't know you of course, but I'm letting you know how it's coming across. Whatever her difficulties Marshall is a serious artist with a significant body of great work and deserves respect.

Wait... Chan is a scientologist nowadays!? Sigh noone’s perfect

I don’t want to know don’t tell me

It’s weird if they wanted to push her voice as soul but then again not sure what tag genre it fits? Blues mixed with slacker indie from the early mid 90s... slacker blues maybe... but soul idk...

Edd are you serious man? christ

I don't see a big difference between unprofessional and highly erratic performer. There's plenty of musicians I love that I have no desire to see live again (Westerberg & Lucinda jump to mind pretty quickly).

Pretty big Sun fan here as well-Manhattan, Nothin But Time in particular are gorgeous.

Sun is exceptional.

I saw her once on a bill with Sleater-Kinney when I was in high school, she performed (I thought pretty well) for 40 minutes or so, not really engaging much with the audience, then said “knock knock,” we answered “who’s there,” and she walked off stage.

xp Jukebox is maybe her only bad album, and even that one has "Metal Heart"

She was one of the best indie artists of the late '90s and early '00s and I've kind of been puzzling over why her stature has fallen so much in recent years, but reading through some of the comments in this thread it's like, oh yeah gross sexism

xp lol, that's pretty good

i saw her solo in 98 or 99 and she did not seem to be in a very good place, but when she sat down at the piano and played "i found a reason" ... wow.

yeah her version of that song is so devastating

my fave memory is of seeing her at Bumbershoot in 1999 maybe a year after that Moon Pix tour, the Covers album hadn't come out yet and slowly figuring out that she was playing "Satisfaction" w/o the chorus totally gave me chills

haha, literally listening to Jukebox and thinking how great the Dylan cover is in particular.
I love the two 'Memphis'records (Greatest/Jukebox).

I've seen her play live twice, both times had a...rollercoaster quality if you will.

teenie hodges is basically god

I think I was pretty fair to her in this 2013 interview piece.

I only ever saw her live once, in 2001, at Reading Festival, while Papa Roach were on the main stage. It was not good. Could barely hear her over the nu-metal

I saw her once on a bill with Sleater-Kinney when I was in high school, she performed (I thought pretty well) for 40 minutes or so, not really engaging much with the audience, then said “knock knock,” we answered “who’s there,” and she walked off stage.

― JoeStork

that is amazing.

I have never seen her live. I hope to someday. Found this the other night, didn't know she was on tour - pretty good performance!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xoMsddrowY

Saw her on MoonPix tour in a tiny club in 98 with Jim & Mick, this show in fact:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4XqTl0ACoY

which was uh... a bit up and down, she was very very nervous. This video seems to belie that.

The only other time I saw her was on The Greatest tour with the Memphis Soul Review in a larger seated theater, pretty good from what I remember, I'd had a bit of wine at dinner (it was my birthday).

I'm definitely the wrong kind of Cat Power fan cause my fav alb is The Greatest, also her Dylan parody is hilarious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Ic2-N8Vo0

Lol at that knock knock joke. Always heard the album cover to the Smog album Knock Knock (cat + lightning) was a Cat Power nod, guess the title is too?

The 1-2 punch of "Still In Love" into "Rockets" on Myra Lee is one of my favorite song pairings ever, even better if I can crank it up to deafening when the drums kick in on the latter.

I've kind of been puzzling over why her stature has fallen so much in recent years

I'm not sure how much her stature has fallen, but whatever it is, I'd put it largely down to releasing one album of original material in a decade.

Jukebox is maybe her only bad album, and even that one has "Metal Heart"

And Song For Bobby is great too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ss1uN1IHyA

Wanderer out October 5 on Domino.

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b4ed569c2c1a63dc091b2ed/master/pass/Wanderer.jpg

01 Wanderer
02 In Your Face
03 You Get
04 Woman [ft. Lana Del Rey]
05 Horizon
06 Stay
07 Black
08 Robbin Hood
09 Nothing Really Matters
10 Me Voy
11 Wanderer / Exit

Cat Power + LDR is a teamup I did not anticipate.

Same!

oh god I can totally hear it too

oh hell yes.

sweet! the only show she's playing near me is opening for the national! not sweet!

My body is ready.

Any idea who is producing this one? The SVN album was self-produced and it showed, I think production is a key thing for my dislike of her past efforts. She has either sounded undercooked (SVN) or too cleanly adorned... like bordering on bland mor music (jukebox and greatest to some degree). Sometimes the songwriting and her voice makes it tolerable but when it’s bad it’s unlistenable to me.

PR says it's self-produced

Mmm well cautiously excited for this one then.

as someone who generally doesn't notice these things, I have to say that the production on SUN was abominable. I listened to that album once and binned it.

philippe zdar was ~involved~ with the mixing/production

this really is a horrible thread title

in beth's defense, it was before the towers fell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8nU87OCrA

Match made in heaven. You are free comes to mind