Cat Power/ Chan Marshall- genius or fruitloop?

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

Great addition to "songs in which a doctor gives advice/diagnosis."

Lana might as well not even be there.

relatable

Lana might as well not even be there.
otm

good song though, and production is good too (Moka)!

the backing vocals are subtle enough to have just been another backing vocal from chan - the lana name probably helps more than anything to bolster sales tbh

i'd rather the extra vocals be more on the subtle side than too bluntly thrown in; imo she definitely adds to it, although it'd be nice if she was in the video

the refrain becomes a bit much at the end but otherwise good song

good new song. excited for this album. I liked Sun well enough. I wish she'd released more albums and yes I think a bit part of her stature dropping was her not putting new original material out more often, also, she really did have a run of terrifyingly terrible live performances for a number of years there that sullied her reputation. I saw her with MIck and Jim touring for Moon PIx at a tiny club in Berkeley and she was great but ran off the stage the second she was done and didn't come back. The next four shows of hers I saw were erratic, unfinished, weird, scary. Then I didn't see her again for many years until recently opening for Nick Cave and she was so good solo in a huge outdoor venue with really not a lot of people listening to her. I'm glad she's doing better. She's very talented.

Really excited for the record.

I was wondering how many of the current crop of female singer songwriters she influenced; I hear her in van Etten, Waxahatchee, Angel Olsen for example.

i'd assume like 7/8 of them?
i'm playing a show with a cat power tribute next week -- the influence is kind of difficult to measure imo. it's not just the singing or songwriting (though it is that) it's even the act of speaking up and writing songs in the first place

she is super influential

let's all try to remember these nice things next time she says something we don't like about vaccines