Cat Power
Stubb's, Austin, Texas (September 17, 2006)
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Cat Power
Stubb's, Austin, Texas
September 17, 2006 |
On stage, she's so expressive. Chan Marshall jumps like a kitty, dying to escape through a door that beckons and sits slightly ajar. She plays air guitar, air trumpet, air piano, and last but not least, air drums.
If she had it her way, she might hawk near-beer for O'Douls. On Sunday night, she surveyed Stubb's crowd and looked for a rep, offering herself as a spokesperson to pay off her touring debt.
The Memphis Rhythm Band helped her run through The Greatest from the title track to "Love & Communication."
Marshall was a machine. Any break she took was more of a mechanism to relieve her nerves, tousle her hair or mop herself, running through a stack of white fluffy towels that begged you to ask just how many has she lifted from hotels over the years.
Cat Power excused most of the band and started to play solo, and that is when the ADD show that I've heard so much about began. She pleases fans. She ran through years of Cat Power tunes, re-running verses and belting out classics like "Nude As The News" and revisiting a few from her covers album.
She was ready to depart after that montage, but she's a generous girl who can't quite say, "no."
Stubb's crowd begged and pleaded for more. Marshall showed her cards as a hostess by expressing worry about the thunderstorm that threatened overhead, but please note: she didn't offer real or metaphorical sofas and spare rooms.
Instead she reverted to some sort of stand-up act she developed long ago in the Moon Pix era. Marshall responded to our groveling by becoming a little mean, calling the audience a "NICE DOG” that wouldn't go away. Part of the reason we stayed was because she kept indulging us with her beautiful and smokey voice. It was so consistent and so sultry that it sounded like it was pouring out of pre-recorded streaming audio... but it wasn't.
Marshall stood before us, creating lyrics on the spot. This time, they were about our asses frying and our heads getting electrocuted--think back to the ironic fun of Yo La Tengo's "Nuclear War." It was self destructive and non-sensical, but we didn't care. The pitch was on. It was her, live.
Her last-resort, get-the-hell-out schtick was jarring like a monologue at a dueling-piano bar. She simultaneously started singing and calling out to some mysterious figure named Madonna, who was supposedly peeing in the alley nearby. Cat Power was tortured by Madonna's sea of floating spores like some germ freak. We, the collective dirty dog, didn't see anything like that, but, then again, Marshall is the one we paid to see. The Cat, who sits on stage, with the bird's eye view.
STEPHANIE HOLMES |