Impressions of Cat Power at the Paramount

I've written about Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, a few times: a 2012 review of Sun for The Stranger's Line Out music blog, a 2018 review of the Wanderer for The Stranger, and a concert preview for the same paper the same year. All have disappeared from the internet, and even the Wayback Machine can't find them, so here are a few random thoughts drawn from one concert, but many years of listening to and writing about her.

This Paramount concert was my third time seeing Cat Power after a somewhat tentative solo acoustic set at Bumbershoot in 1999 and a more confident full band set at Showbox at the Market in 2018.

The image below is intentionally blurry, because she performed in semi-darkness. In boosting my images--not counting shots of the venue and the crowd--everything blurred out. I believe it's how she deals with stage discomfort, since the light was never on her face, but always on her keyboard player, possibly for sheet music-reading purposes. To my surprise, Chan also referred to sheet music, though not often.

She went on 30+ minutes after the 8pm start time, and no one seemed to mind, not least because of the artists playing on the PA beforehand (there was no opening act): Al Green, James Brown, the Supremes, Roberta Flack, Sam and Dave, Irma Thomas, and Joe Tex.

Grace Jones did the same at the Moore Theatre in 2022, and it only seemed to stoke anticipation for her worth-the-wait appearance.  

As advertised, Chan performed the entirety of 2006's 12-track album, The Greatest, but performed several other songs, too, like 2012's "Manhattan." The soulful material, recorded at Memphis's Ardent Studios with Green and Booker T. and the MGs veterans, sounded more Rolling Stones-style blues-rock with this band. 

Her voice, in its jazzy, improvisatory textures, has never sounded more like Strange Weather-era Marianne Faithfull--she's starting to look like her, too--though she sounded like Bobbie Gentry on one track (I forget which one). Mostly though, she sounded like herself.

The show was 90 minutes altogether, culminating in a standing ovation, and had me home by 10:30pm on a Friday night...and I am absolutely not complaining. I don't much miss the late-night club shows of the grunge years.

Overall, good stuff from a lady who has been through some...stuff. At one point, she joked about a former partner, and everyone laughed, because I think we all knew who she meant: actor/cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, with whom she had a tempestuous relationship--their breakup inspired the album Sun.

I'll post the set list once I can find one online.  

I think this is the fourth time I've seen a musician or band perform the entirety of a single album: Massive Attack and Liz Fraser with Mezzanine in 2019, Scritti Politti with Cupid & Psyche 85 in 2021, and Kim Deal with Nobody Loves You More last year. For more information about The Greatest tour, which is shockingly robust--it continues through November--please see this page at the Domino site.