Cat Power at the Roundhouse

Cat Power
Eaux
Roundhouse, 25 June 2013

This show was originally meant to happen back in December but was cancelled due to Chan Marshall falling ill. I must admit I was looking forward to it more back then because I was caught up in the excitement of her excellent new album, Sun, and often that is the most perfect time to catch an artist live. Six months on and the fervour has worn off somewhat but of course I was still curious to see how these songs sounded live and to see if Marshall has become a less erratic performer since the last time I saw her.
It's actually been five years since she's last played London and although I have always enjoyed her live, I remember the shows in support of The Greatest and Jukebox polarised audiences, some utterly confused by the dark stage, Chan's lack of communication with the crowd and the way she would awkwardly move around the stage, sometimes crouching in the corner as if she wasn't sure she wanted to be there. Of course the music, particularly Marshall's captivating world weary voice, was still great and it was a huge leap forward from those infamous shows earlier in her career where she was reported to be incapable of finishing a song, sometimes rambling incoherently, even bursting into tears. A Cat Power show is an entirely different experience these days but she is still as perplexing as ever.

Marshall is certainly more professional these days though, with the show starting just before 9pm and Chan and her all-female band (well bar one, the keyboardist/guitarist is a guy) quietly easing into things with a beautiful reworking The Greatest, turning its soulful swing to a haunting slightly ominous sound. It was a truly stunning start that harked back to her more stripped down early days, with the song building as the drums crashed in midway through and her voice sounding pained and beautiful which she eventually distorted with her vocoder as it reached its noisy finale. Chan herself looked healthier than ever: tanned and smiling, wearing black leather and her new punky, short blonde hairdo. It was good to finally have her back.

Cherokee, from the new record, disappointing didn't live up to the opening number simply because, maybe due to putting too much into The Greatest, her voice suddenly went hoarse and whispery and was overshadowed by the backing vocals. It was wonderful though to see Chan back behind a guitar for Silent Machine and I do wonder why she doesn't play it live so much these days because she still sounds great and the extra power it provided made the song one of the highlights of the set.

Apparently some people thought the two drummers on the song Manhattan overpowered it but for me it gave it real groove although it probably went on a little long. In fact most of the songs from the latest album translated well to the live setting and were played pretty faithfully (except perhaps Always On My Own which really dragged and sounded particularly tuneless), it was when she veered from this that she produced mixed results, mostly positive though. King Rides By from What Would The Community Think was definitely a successful reworking, the song sounding punchier and more menacing, while I Don't Blame You from You Are Free became a seductively cool blues number.

New song Bully was played with just a piano backing her and I'm sure would have been one of the most moving moments of the night, unfortunately the crowd around me at that point took it as an opportunity to talk and the moment was somewhat ruined. Still her voice did sound incredible. There was also a cover of the Rowland S. Howard song Shivers, which sounded almost like a Cowboy Junkies tune with extra atmospheric feedback and was strangely haunting. 

My least favourite part of the night was the over-long cover of Angelitos Negros, which was never really a favourite of mine on Jukebox and tonight just seemed to go on forever and lacked any kind of focus. This along with Always On My Own and the lack of attention given to the stark, plaintive Bully meant the middle of the show sagged a little but by the end, after an magnificent Metal Heart (which is probably my favourite Cat Power song), an uplifting Nothing But Time (complete with the mesmerising video of three cool bike-riding chicks playing on the backdrop) and finishing on a superb version of Ruin, which saw Chan gleefully throwing white roses out to the audience, the concert definitely ended on a high.

There was no encore (which I always admire as they are such a fake, scripted thing on the whole), although she definitely could have genuinely returned if she wanted to as the crowd remained cheering for a good while after the lights came up and even Chan for a while seemed like she didn't want to leave the stage, throwing little Cat Power cards into the audience and smiling. Overall it was certainly a great show, even if it lacked some of the edginess and unpredictability of previous Cat Power shows I've seen. She definitely seems more comfortable on stage although sometimes still seems nervous as she goes from a swagger to a sort of limp walk. Her insistence on wandering the stage means that on some songs the vocals suffer but on the moments where she gets it right and everything falls into place it becomes truly great and that's what makes her always worth seeing live, and why I will go see her again in the future, just to catch those truly great moments.

The support band tonight was supposed to be an all-girl punk band called Xray Eyeballs, who sound fantastic, but for some reason instead we got electronic trio called Eaux. I would pronounce their name as "Oh" while shrugging my shoulders because for me they were as dull as they come. The difficulty of bands like these is that they are pretty boring to watch live, with all three members remaining as still as statues behind their keyboards, so if the music doesn't captivate it can be a tedious experience. I'm sure on record the droning synths and haunting vocals are very atmospheric but, for me at least, it was, well, let's just say far from fun live.