Cat Power is the stage name of American
singer/songwriter Chan
Marshall (born Charlyn Marie Marshall on January 21,
1972). She is known for her
minimalist style, sparse
guitar and
piano playing, and
breathy vocals.
Biography
Chan
Marshall was born in Atlanta, Georgia
. Marshall's father, Charlie, is a
blues musician and itinerant
pianist.
Her childhood involved much upheaval, with
Marshall living throughout the Southern United States (Greensboro,
North Carolina
; Bartlett, Tennessee
; and Georgia and South Carolina
), back and forth between parents and her
grandmother. In interviews she has openly discussed her
childhood and stated that the constant traveling prepared her for
the touring life of a professional musician.
After dropping out of high school, she started performing under the
name Cat Power while in Atlanta, backed by musicians Glen Thrasher,
Marc Moore, and others. While in Atlanta, Marshall played her first
live shows as support to her friends' bands, including Magic Bone
and
Opal Foxx Quartet. Due to her
close relationships with the various people involved, she has
stated that her involvement in music at this time was primarily a
social interest rather than an artistic one. She also stated in a
2007 interview for Soft Focus that the music itself was more
experimental and that playing shows was often an opportunity for
her and her friends to get drunk and take drugs.
Music career
Early years: 1992-1999
In 1992
she moved to New York
City
with Glen Thrasher. It was Thrasher who
introduced her to New York's
free-jazz and
experimental music scene. In
particular she cites a concert by
Anthony Braxton with giving her the
confidence to perform in public.
Her first New York show was at a warehouse
in Brooklyn
and she has
described her early New York shows as "more
improvisational." One of her shows during this period was as
the support act to
Man or
Astro-man? and consisted of her playing a two string guitar and
singing the word "no" for fifteen minutes. Around this time she
made the acquaintance of
God
Is My Co-Pilot, a relationship that resulted in them releasing
her first single "Headlights" in a limited run of 500 copies on
their Making of Americans label.
Cat Power performing in New York in
February 2009
In 1994 she opened for
Liz Phair in New
York. In attendance were
Steve Shelley
of
Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of
Two Dollar Guitar, who encouraged
her to record, and played on her first two albums, 1995's
Dear Sir and 1996's
Myra Lee, the latter taking its name from
Marshall's mother. Both albums were recorded in New York on the
same day in December 1994 and display a lack of conventional song
structures. In 1996 she was signed to
Matador Records and, along with Foljahn and
Shelley, recorded her third album,
What Would the Community
Think, which spawned a
single and
music
video, "
Nude as the
News".
In late
1996, following a three-month tour co-headlining with the band
Guv'ner in support of the release of
What Would the Community Think, Marshall disappeared from
the music scene, initially working as a baby
sitter in Portland,
Oregon
and then moving to a farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina
with then boyfriend Bill Callahan. The plan was
to permanently retire from public performance but during a
sleepless night resulting from a nightmare, Marshall wrote several
new songs. These songs would make up the bulk of
Moon Pix.
The record was recorded at Sing Sing Studios
in Melbourne
in eleven days with backing musicians Mick Turner
and Jim White of the Dirty Three. The album was well-received
by critics, and gained her recognition in the
indie rock scene. However, during subsequent
tours Marshall states that she had grown tired of her own material.
This resulted in a series of shows during 1999 where Marshall
provided musical accompaniment to the
silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc.
The shows combined original material and many covers, many of which
would later see release on
The
Covers Record, a collection of
cover songs recorded at various sessions in 1998
and 1999. A selection of covers that didn't make it on to the album
were recorded at Peel Acres, home of the British DJ
John Peel. The session was broadcast on his
BBC Radio 1 show and featured Marshall's own
interpretations of
Bob Dylan's "Hard Times
in New York Town" and
Oasis's
"Wonderwall", amongst others.
Personal struggles: 2000-2006
By the start of the decade, Marshall's live performances had become
erratic and unpredictable, with the New Yorker suggesting, "It is
foolhardy to describe a Cat Power event as a concert" before citing
"rambling confessions" and "[talking] to a friend's baby from the
stage." Marshall later attributed this period to a drinking
problem, telling HARP magazine in 2006 "I didn't know I was messed
up."
Cat Power performing in Toronto in
September 2006
In 2003 she resumed releasing original material with
You Are Free, which featured guest
musicians such as
Eddie Vedder,
Dave Grohl, and the Dirty Three's
Warren Ellis. A
music video directed by Brett Vapnek, was
released for the song "
He War".
2004 saw the release of a DVD
Speaking for Trees, which featured a
single, nearly 2-hour static shot of Marshall performing in a
woodland, and was accompanied by an audio CD containing the
eighteen-minute song "Willie Deadwilder", featuring
M. Ward on guitar. Also this
year Marshall lent her vocals to the track "I've Been Thinking"
from the
Handsome Boy
Modeling School album,
White
People. Marshall toured through 2005, including an
Australian tour supporting
Nick Cave and an appearance at the
Patti Smith-curated
Meltdown festival. The shows largely consisted of
material that would appear on her next album. In 2005 Marshall was
featured on the song "Great Waves" from
Dirty Three's album
Cinder.
The
Greatest, was released in January 2006. This was not a
greatest hits record but rather the
Matador Records-arranged
collaboration with
Al Green's guitarist
Teenie Hodges and other musicians.
Following its release, Marshall canceled previously arranged live
shows in North America and Europe. She was struggling with a
relationship with a young Miami investment banker. Ultimately,
Marshall used the hiatus to recover from what she described as a
"psychotic break" that had left her feeling suicidal and was
brought on by mental exhaustion and alcohol abuse.
As part of her
recovery she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Miami
's Mount
Sinai Medical Center but left after a week, stating "being in there
wasn't me." She later likened the experience to "a pit of
hell." Marshall gave a first person account of her breakdown in an
interview for the November 2006 issue of
Spin.
She returned to live performance in April 2006, playing with the
Memphis Rhythm Band and as a solo performer, including a
performance at a
Bob Dylan tribute concert
in New York (a fund raiser for the charity "Music for
Youth").
Critical and commercial success: 2007 - present
Marshall put together a new band in Winter 2006 with whom she
toured and recorded throughout 2007. The Dirty Delta Blues Band
features Judah Bauer (from
Blues
Explosion), Gregg Foreman (
The Delta
72), Erik Paparozzi (Lizard Music), and
Jim White (from
Dirty Three).
Cat Power performing in June
2008
Also in 2007, she became the first female solo act to win the
Shortlist Music Prize when
The Greatest was voted album of the year in June. Earlier
in the year she was nominated in the Best International Female
category at the annual
Brit Awards. The
Dirty Delta Blues band recorded an album of covers called
Jukebox which was
released on January 22, 2008, on
Matador
Records.
In September 2008, Marshall and members of the Dirty Delta Blues
(Erik Paparozzi & Gregg Foreman) recorded their version of
David Bowie's
Space Oddity for a
Lincoln car commercial.
On December 9, 2008, an EP entitled
Dark End of the
Street was released by Matador. The release consists of
left-over cover songs from the
Jukebox sessions.
A version of the gospel song "
Amazing
Grace" - culled from a live performance during her recent tour
with the Dirty Delta Blues band - was released on the
4AD charity compilation
Dark Was The Night: A Red Hot
Compilation, available from February 17, 2009.
In an article from
Spin,
Marshall says of her next proper studio LP, "I'm producing it. One
song is called "Leopard," I used to sing it when I was 26. There's
another song, a spiritual song called "Mountaintops." And there's a
really sweet song called "Funny Things" that's like a little kid's
tap-dance song about having special secret thoughts: "Funny things
in your dreams/Can you whisper talk to me?" And then there's
"Silent Machine," which I actually wrote a long time ago. There's
another song called "Oh Time." It's about my ex and it's about
forgiveness. My friend Susanna always cries when I play it."
Collaborations and contributions
Around this time, Marshall collaborated with
Mick Collins (of
The
Dirtbombs) on a recording of
Ludwig
Rellstab's poem "Auf Dem Strom" for the film
Wayne County
Ramblin'. Marshall sang the poem in German, though she does
not speak the language.
Since returning to the stage Marshall has contributed guest vocals
to several albums. She performed a duet with model
Karen Elson on an English cover of
Serge Gainsbourg's "
Je t'aime... moi non plus" for the
tribute album
Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited. She also sang
lead vocal on the
Ensemble track
"Disown, Delete" and reworked "Revelations" with
Yoko Ono for Ono's 2007 album
Yes, I'm a Witch. She also performed
guest vocals for
Faithless and
El-P. She also duets on the Dexter Romweber Duo song
"Love Letters".
In 2007, Marshall contributed songs to the soundtrack of
Ethan Hawke's new movie
The Hottest State, recording with
Jesse Harris and
Terry Manning, and the
Academy Award-winning
Juno.
In early 2008, she collaborated with Beck and producer Danger Mouse
on the album
Modern Guilt. She
contributed backing vocals to two tracks, "Orphans" and "Walls".
The album was released in July of that year.
In
V for Vendetta Cat
Power's cover of
The Velvet
Underground song "
I Found a
Reason" is played on V's jukebox.
"Maybe Not" of the album
You Are
Free was featured and in the prom scene in the movie
The Quiet.
The
Jukebox
version of "Metal Heart" was played during the closing scene in the
episode
Crime Slut (season 1, episode 4) of the TV-series
The Unusuals.
Two songs, "Living Proof" and "The Greatest", make an appearance in
Wong Kar Wai's first movie in English,
My Blueberry Nights.
Cat Power's cover of "
Hanging
on the Telephone" was used for a 2005 Cingular
commercial.
Cat Power's cover of
Cat Stevens's
"
How Can I Tell You" was featured
in a 2006 commercial for DeBeers.
Cat Power's cover of
David Bowie's
"
Space Oddity" was featured in a 2008
car commercial for the 2009 Lincoln MKS.
Cat Power's song "Werewolf", from her album
You are Free,
is played during Jessica Biel's strip dance performance in the
movie
Powder Blue
released in 2009; the same song is also featured in
Broken Embraces staring
Penelope Cruz.
Cat Power's song "Half of You", from the album
You Are
Free, was featured on the HBO show
True Blood in an
episode 6 love scene, and "Fool", from the same album, was featured
in episode 4 of the third series of Skins.
The TV show
Life featured
several of Cat Power's songs:
"Maybe Not", from the album
You Are
Free, was played in a scene shortly before the credits
during the episode
Initiative 38 (series 2, episode
20);"Metal Heart", in the version from the album
Jukebox, was played during
the scene where Charlie Crews is hallucinating in the episode
The Business of Miracles (season 2, episode 3)"Cross Bones
Style" appeared in "Black Friday" (series 2, episode 8) in the
scene where Charlie Crews meets up with his wife at a hotel.
Chan Marshall provides backup vocals on
Marianne Faithfull's cover of "Hold On"
by
Neko Case on the 2009 album
Easy
Come Easy Go.
Other work
In October 2006 she became the celebrity spokesperson for a line of
jewelry from
Chanel, beginning a series of
non musical activities that continued into the following year
during downtime between touring and recording commitments. In 2007
her voice could be heard in commercials for
Cingular and
De Beers in
the United States and
Garnier in the United
Kingdom. Previously Marshall had done advertisements for
GAP.
She appeared in Doug Aitken's MOMA
installation
Sleepwalkers as a postal worker living in New
York.
Performance style
Cat Power performing in May 2008
Marshall’s live shows have been known for their unpolished nature,
with songs beginning and ending abruptly or blending into one
another without clear transitions. She has also cut short
performances without explanation. On some occasions this has been
put down to her suffering from stage fright and the influence of
alcohol. Marshall has admitted abusing alcohol in the past; in a
2006 interview with the
New York
Times, she declared herself to be
sober, which she defined as having had "seven
drinks in seven months."
Recently, Marshall's performance style has been said to be much
more enthusiastic and professional. An article in
Salon called
The Greatest
"polished and sweetly upbeat", stating that Marshall was
"delivering onstage". In the article, Marshall states that her new
found musical collaborators and sobriety are largely responsible
for her increased confidence onstage.
Discography
References in pop culture
- The
name Chan Marshall was featured as a title in a book of
poems published in 2005 by Costa Rican
poet Luis Chaves.
The book,
which won the III Fray Luis de
León Poetry Prize in Spain
, includes a
two-sectioned poem entitled "Traducción Libre de un Tema Inédito de
Chan Marshall" ("Free Translation of an Unreleased Track by Chan
Marshall").
- Philadelphia hardcore punk band
Blacklisted makes mention of Chan
Marshall in the song, "Wish", from their 2008 release Heavier
than Heaven, Lonelier than God.
- British writer Clare Wigfall
claimed that Cat Power's album Moon Pix influenced the writing of
her short story collection "The Loudest Sound and Nothing",
published by Faber and Faber in 2007 and winner of the 2008 BBC
National Short Story Award.
- In the episode 'Two Bodies In The Lab' in season 1 of
Bones Cat Power is mentioned as being among Dr. Brennan's
CD collection.
References
- As of January 2008, he plays Wednesday's night at the Cabaret Piano
Bar, formerly Carbo's Cafe, on Roswell Road, in Atlanta.
- Pitchfork Media interview
- Chickfactor interview
- Harp magazine interview
- [1]
- [2]
- Spin magazine interview
- Wayne County Ramblin' Official Site
- New York Times article
- Cingular Covers the Hits
- Video: Cat Power Covers Cat Stevens, Hawks
Bling
- Doug Aitken exhibition
- Irving Plaza gig review
- Rolling Stone article
- The cat comes back
External links
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