Cat Power
This year, Cat Power’s The Greatest turned 20. Released in January 2006, the album marked a turning point for both Cat Power’s musical output and her live performances. Long wracked by stage fright, the expressive and evocative singer-songwriter found a new confidence touring the record. “The way I feel now onstage singing is the way I felt when I was 6 years old singing for my grandmama,” she told one outlet, as recounted in a recent feature in Far Out. To mark the album’s anniversary, she released an EP called Redux in January, which pairs a rousing new version of “Could We” with covers of James Brown and Prince songs. On her current tour, the artist born Chan Marshall revisits The Greatest live, including a Nashville stop Saturday at Brooklyn Bowl.
Marshall came home to the South to record The Greatest — not to Atlanta, where she was raised, but to Memphis, where she recorded her strange, surprising third album What Would the Community Think with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley 10 years prior. In the decade between those two albums, she released three others: 1998’s Moon Pix, The Covers Record in 2000 and 2003’s You Are Free, which paired her minor-key piano and alto vocals with appearances from grunge gods like Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder. With breakup ballads like “Good Woman” and “Half of You” and stream-of-consciousness lyrical outpourings like “He War,” the thread running through You Are Free is of releasing herself from old patterns.
The Greatest, meanwhile, begins from a place of deep resignation. Written as Marshall was navigating sobriety and the end of a long-term relationship, it’s at times a dismal record, forthcoming about disappointment and loss. It also begins from an ending: Its devastating title track explores lost ambition and failed potential, and establishes a fascination with Muhammad Ali that echoes throughout the album’s imagery. “It’s about, ‘What if he never became Muhammad Ali,’” she told the Raleigh News & Observer ahead of a show at Carrboro, N.C.’s Cat’s Cradle in 2006. “That’s a song for every man, woman or kid who had that same great strength as him, but didn’t go as far.”
To bring the record to life, Marshall returned to the sounds she’d grown up on, leaning into influences from soul music and the blues. Two Memphis soul heavyweights, the brothers Flick and Teenie Hodges, joined her as members of the 12-piece Memphis Rhythm Band, imbuing the album with formidable sonic chops and a deep well of emotion. Alongside them, Marshall becomes more open as The Greatest goes on. “Lived in Bars” reflects on youthful misadventures with a wry smile, while “Willie” marvels at a meet-cute that Power heard from a taxi driver. “There are some people who don’t believe in love, but Willie and Rebecca prove ’em all wrong,” she muses. By the time the fractured scales of “Where Is My Love” begin, she’s searching for it for herself.
Being vulnerable like this is a kind of hope, and Marshall reckons with the implications of that on the album’s rollicking closer, “Love and Communication.” With the Hodges brothers in mind, the song might be an allusion to “Love and Happiness,” from Al Green’s 1972 classic I’m Still in Love With You — an album Teenie plays on, and a song that he helped write. “Love and Happiness” is ecstatic and driving, but “Love and Communication” is more off-kilter, an anthem to letting go when the fear of losing control pushes you to the tipping point. “You called me and you were not hunting me,” Marshall repeats. “I want you to come along for the ride / How long will you stay?”
In the years since The Greatest, Marshall seems more comfortable onstage. When I last saw her play, during her 2019 tour for the album Wanderer, she blessed the audience with incense. In 2022, she told Milwaukee Magazine about her strategy of creating “a portal” when performing, to focus on “just be[ing] within the music.” The portal she’ll open in Nashville is a must-see.
