Cat Power
People have either never heard of Cat Power, the stage name of singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, or they’d lie down in traffic for her. Born in Atlanta, she has played all over the world to sold-out audiences and released 12 albums since the mid-’90s, battling with mental health and medical conditions but continuing to create. Her evolution of moods and styles has been essential to her career, and some consider her records modern classics. Mostly, devoted listeners are drawn to her voice. Marshall has the ability to bring all her feelings to the surface through songs that express life’s beauty and pain.
She is also an exceptionally gifted interpreter of other artists’ music and has released multiple collections of cover songs. From mega-hits like the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” to songs that deserve to be remembered better like “I’ll Be Seeing You” (made famous by Billie Holiday), Marshall renders them with exquisite beauty and an emotional depth sometimes overshadowed in the original versions. Recently, Marshall has turned this talent toward her idol — and someone else who can be a polarizing figure — Bob Dylan.
In November 2022, she performed her most ambitious homage to date: At London’s Royal Albert Hall, she reimagined the infamous concert Dylan performed a few hours away at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on May 17, 1966. Until an official release in 1998, bootleg copies of the show recording were labeled with the wrong location, so it was known as “the Royal Albert Hall Concert.”
His landmark Nashville-recorded album Blonde on Blonde had been released in the U.K. the day before the show. The first set was acoustic, well-received by an audience that looked to Dylan as a folk hero, above the commercial aspirations of rock music. The second set was electric — backed by The Hawks, who would later rename themselves The Band — and so divisive that one heckler notoriously shouted “JUDAS!” at the perceived turncoat singer. Fueled by the escalating discontent, Dylan heckled back, mumbling into the mic to trick the crowd into quieting down and instructing the band to “play it fucking loud” as they roared into the show-closing “Like a Rolling Stone.”
Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert is a song-by-song re-creation of Dylan’s set list that night. Though the arrangements are largely faithful to the original concert, Marshall avoids the nostalgia trap of merely mimicking Dylan’s own phrasing and channels the mythic energy of the show, which happened five years before she was born. And, well, it sounds like Dylan on downers. Her sultry voice is pitched far deeper than Dylan’s, making it easier to understand the lyrics — and has there ever been a better lyric than “Drawing crazy patterns on your sheets”? Whatever you’re going through in life, there’s a Dylan song for it, adding to the sense that he’s the only one who ever figured it out, and that feeling radiates out from Marshall’s interpretation.
Marshall is on an international tour for the album, which stops Sunday at the Country Music Hall of Fame. She was firing on all cylinders at her Memphis show in December. Its breathtaking acoustic portion felt intimate, pumping new luster into well-worn classics, while the electric set was raw and joyous and hopeful. The audience skewed older, including perhaps some fans who were discovering Dylan themselves in 1966. Far from the original show’s skepticism and unease, they seemed to revere both the material and the new perspective Marshall brought to it. Instead of dancing as she usually does, she stood mostly still, propped up on 5-inch Louboutins, effortlessly breathing her own spirit into the songs while also capturing the essence of her hero.
