Cat Power/ Chan Marshall- genius or fruitloop?

Weird because the Jukebox version of "Metal Heart" has a humongous chorus.

On her cover of the VU's "I Found A Reason" she omits the verses and just does the chorus(x2) as the verse and then turns the coda into a chorus.

It's nice but I'm a much bigger fan of 'guitar Cat Power' than 'piano Cat Power.'

what's funny about that song is that I was more familiar with her version than theirs because I'd never picked up Loaded at the time. Then years later when I heard the VU version I couldn't place where I knew the song from.

I can't say I like the Rihanna cover much -- it's not too different from the original, which for me has a more spectral quality. This one by comparison is more tepid.

i watched this earlier without knowing it was a rhianna cover. i vaguely recognised it and somehow concluded it was a fleetwood mac song.

i liked low's cover better and it was a pretty straight-ahead cover iirc

but cat power's is definitely hers

Oh my, that Funny or Die video posted upthread is pretty much exactly like the one Cat Power live show that I saw.
Every time I see this thread title, i think the answer is: Yes.

NYT profile:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/arts/music/cat-power-wanderer.html

Interesting tidbits about her breakup with Matador.

Rob Schnapf, a producer for Elliott Smith who mixed “Wanderer” and engineered some recording sessions, said that Ms. Marshall knew “she did not want to make a big record — she absolutely did not.” He recalled moments of inspiration in the studio where the spirit would hit her: “Her eyes would roll back and she’d just channel and go,” he said. “You can’t make that happen. Either you’ve got the genie in the bottle, or you’ve just got the bottle.”

But Matador rejected the album.

“They said, do it again, do it over,” Ms. Marshall explained. (Mr. Slater confirmed that Matador told him “Wanderer” was “not good enough, not strong enough to put out.” The album will be released by Domino.)

Ms. 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. (“Sun” has sold 114,000 albums to date including streams, according to Nielsen.)

But to Ms. 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.”

Matador said in a statement: “Chan Marshall is without question one of the most talented, brilliant artists we’ve been fortunate to know,” adding: “Our working relationship with Chan has not been without difficult moments. We’ve had disagreements over matters both artistic and business, but none of that changes our respect for her as a person or performer.”

Ms. Marshall said she did not alter the music after the label change, but did add a track: “Woman,” featuring Lana Del Rey, which in many ways became the defiant, upbeat centerpiece of an understated album, beginning with a folky, pointed lament:

If I had a dime for every time
You tell me I’m not what you need
If I had a quarter I would pull it together
And I would take it to the bank and then leave

Asked if the track, which has received more than a million YouTube views in a month, was a middle finger to her ex-label, Ms. Marshall demurred: “Thank you for asking, but no comment.”

She did, however, compare some indie-rock circles to a fraternity, with little space for a lone woman without a band or a manager. “I had to fight a lot for little stupid things, but I just thought, ‘That’s what I do,’” she said. “Pavement’s going to the Bahamas or something with the label, Interpol is going to St. Lucia or wherever with the label. I remember yelling: ‘Can you take me out to dinner? I’d love to go to a fancy place!’”

a Matador executive playing her an album by Adele and telling her that that was how a record was supposed to sound

wow!

Can't wait to see Gerard's rebuttal to that lol...

FWIW, Matador also recently rejected a Malkmus album.

wait pavement went to the bahamas on matador's dime? is that real?

I'm playing "fact checking cuz" with some quick web searching, but all I'm finding are references to her interview.

Though here's Malkmus in 2001 (after Pavement's breakup), saying he's never been there:

Q: What do you do when you're not working on music?

A: "That's a good question. I hike, hang out, go see movies, eat, read, do yoga, go to the gym sometimes, tennis, go on vacation. I went to Hawaii for two months, that was great, (and) Southeast Asia. We like to go warm places; it's cold here. Maybe we'll go down to the Bahamas, Caribbean-type area. I've never been down there, maybe we'll try that. The Grenadines? That sounds good to me."

I know that none of the Pavement albums were recorded in exotic locations; they're not this dude - https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lenny-kravitz-on-recording-his-new-album-in-the-bahamas-249128/

Looks like Matador artists Fucked Up played the 2011 "Bruise Cruise" from Miami to Naussau: http://matablog.matadorrecords.com/2011/09/23/fucked-up-malkmus-jicks-this-weekend-in-nyc/

Sorry to derail (further), but this is a great quote from that Kravitz interview:

You put DJ Military, a local guy from Eleuthera, on your new song “Boongie Drop.” Did he freak out when he heard that Jay-Z is on that one too?
It’s like living in Mayberry. He said, “Yeah, cool, man.” That’s his whole reaction! I brought Mick Jagger there once. We went to a shack to get a beer, and they asked, “So, what do you do?” He was like, “I make music.” “What kind of music?” “Rock & roll.” “Oh, great.” Then the guy started talking about fishing.

I'm surprised by this from Matador and not to a degree. Running a label and selling music has been hard so I can't really denigrate them for asking for hits. On the other hand I can't imagine Cat Power albums are extremely expensive to produce and I'm sure they see a return on anything she put out with them.

just gonna say that imo Chan is bullshitting in much of the above. also, just to speak in general terms, when an artist cancels a giant tour for which they've hired expensive session guys, or doesn't make what they were supposed to make on a big tour, the label often is the one who absorbs the cost - which is then billable to the record that was gonna be promoted. in re: the cost of Cat Power albums to produce: studio costs are 1) the cost of the studio 2) the cost of the producer, engineer, mixer 3) the cost of the musicians you hire 4) travel & lodging & food for everybody. iirc she hired session guys for The Greatest, right? session guys cost MASSIVE DOLLARS. as do big studios. as can string arrangements depending on where/how you get em done. if you have your shit together, you can, in a big studio, finish three or four songs a day, cutting costs. I don't have any inside info on how many days it takes in a studio to do a Cat Power record, but Sun was recorded in four different studios, in Malibu, Silverlake, Paris & South Beach. Traveling internationally & working internationally jacks up the budget severely especially on the lodgings q usually. I can't speak to the other studios but the Paris one she picked is a huge destination studio that's been profiled multiple times by the NYT, the Fader, etc., people go there to make the records they submit to NARAS for consideration.

So my guess is that the budgets for these records are very large.

Even though “The Greatest” was getting good reviews, a tour in support of the record had to be postponed because of her problems. Her label, Matador, estimated that it lost more than $100,000 on marketing and promotion, paying her supporting band (including a onetime member of Al Green’s band) and canceled shows.

Once the tour got under way in April, Matador bought insurance to be on the safe side. But now that the tour is a success, and the album has sold more than 100,000 copies, Matador is rereleasing the record, with new album cover art and a new promotional push.

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/arts/music/20cat.html

a Matador executive playing her an album by Adele and telling her that that was how a record was supposed to sound

i find it hard to believe that anyone would do this, let alone someone from the label that released 'what would the community think'

...in 1996

the principal people involved are the same then as now

I haven't had much contact w/Matador offices since 2009 but back then I knew everybody in the office and I 100% do not believe that story, at all.

like, it is a lie, is my opinion.

So verdict is: fruitloop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na-TrimoFPU

Very good performance on Colbert.

album is good. not as great as Moon Pix, You Are Free, Covers Record, or the Greatest, but it's good. ON the whole it seems a little ... safe? Which is fine I guess because Sun is like the complete opposite of this and this album is better, certainly.

She has really polished her live act, she sounds really good in that Colbert.

I don't like that performance at all. It is boring and lifeless. Her erratic personality with the ups and downs which was always an important part of her performances seems to be completely gone. The voice as well sounds streamlined to me. It used to be so expressive, now it is totally controlled. I think I have lost all interest in her music. To be honest I already had given up on her after the Covers Record which I still liked because of the nudity of her versions.

Her erratic personality with the ups and downs which was always an important part of her performances seems to be completely gone.

this enrages me. she's healthier now. demanding & celebrating instability from performers for our own vicarious thrills is so fuckin gross.

otm

her erratic performances were not fun. I saw several of them. I left at least a few early because they made me too uncomfortable and they were, at times, frankly, scary. The first time I saw her (with the Dirty Three) she was charming, though obviously had some stage fright; the next few times were just...no. I'm really glad she's not in that space anymore. She's immensely talented. She deserves her success.

I shared dressing rooms with her during several of those performances. the way people romanticized & continue to romanticize that time & those shows makes me sick & is a major factor in how jaded I am about music criticism in general

https://www.thecut.com/2018/10/cat-power-wanderer.html
how has this not been posted yet?!

I love this:

But the rejection galvanized her. “The 70-year-old me, whom I have yet to meet, was like, You ain’t got no time for this shit. You fucking fuck those motherfuckers. You got your kid here. Keep working, do what you do. Life will continue. You’re going to be okay,” Marshall explains.

Maybe the songwriting has gotten blander than what she did on the 90’s but I prefer this level of professionalism and overall healthiness in her than those erratic, trainwrecked performances that were very common in her 20+ years ago. She was miserable and as someone who went to one of her concerts, it also made for a terrible listening experience. Most of the people in the concert I went to wanted their money back. I didn’t ask for my money because I felt really bad for her but it was really not a good show.

at the time I certainly didn't think I'd be going to see her again in 2018, in fact I probably doubted she'd be around by now.

I mean I prefer it in the live performances. I too prefer the music from way back then.

Chan is in general a very frustrating vocalist for me because I really love her voice and she is easily in my top 20 but I rarely find her musical choices interesting.

listening now, this album sounds great!

People who loved older Cat Power performances simply for her 'erratic personality with all the up and downs' just like to jerk off while watching women fail on stage, don't they? I thought we moved past that.

Anyway, the new album is giving me strong Covers Record / You Are Free vibes in how understated and stripped down it is. I was actually surprised how stark it sounds after the messiness of Sun and the lushness of The Greatest. Not breaking any new musical ground, sure, but I like it and I can see myself coming back to it a lot in the upcoming months.

I feel like that whole attitude is just the logical end-point of the whole fetishisation of imperfection/fragility/precariousness you get in some indie rock circles. As an aesthetic preference it's defensible (even if it's one I think is mostly lame) but when you're extending that to behaviour that's a product of obvious mental illness... I mean that's just grim.

I don't remember anyone saying "wow Elliot Smith is so much better now that his sets are a goddamned drugged up mess"

contemplating the fragility of existence always makes me horny

the idea that women artists aren't sufficiently fascinating unless they are figuratively bleeding on stage has always burned me up.

32 minute radio show from today. Music and interview.

https://www.kcrw.com/latest/live-on-mbe-cat-power

^ Thanks, this is awesome! A Cross Bones Style / Nude as the News mashup!

Also a p4k feature

https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/the-music-that-made-cat-powers-chan-marshall/

I feel like that whole attitude is just the logical end-point of the whole fetishisation of imperfection/fragility/precariousness you get in some indie rock circles. As an aesthetic preference it's defensible (even if it's one I think is mostly lame) but when you're extending that to behaviour that's a product of obvious mental illness... I mean that's just grim.

― Matt DC, Friday, October 5, 2018 7:08 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

definitely this but also the age old cliche' spouted by lots of non-hardcore music fans I've met who believe one must SUFFER for their art, which is total nonsense.