I do/do not hate myself and I do/do not want to die (check one)
You know those mornings where you wake up bleary-eyed and unsteady, kinda not sure if you cried until you passed out or just slept with your face down in the pillow in an attempt at self-suffocation, only to find that, somewhere between midnight and 3 am, you had entirely too much Cat Power cued up in your iTunes?

I hadn't, until this year.

And I know that's an oddity, given that

A) Cat Power's from Athens, GA
and
B) I live in Atlanta, where we adopt those Athens stars as our own readily, whether they both have tools AND are a toolshed (Michael Stipe), or have just gotten kinda boring (Emily and Amy).

(Note I didn't say shit about Fred Schneider. You can't hate on Fred Schneider)


I used to fucking HATE Chan Marshall's quietly fragile "oh god look at me and I'll break" persona, and found everything she touched to be over-lauded by bearded, overweight Indie hipsters who were the musical equivalent of the Simpson's comic book guy, always drooling into a PBR as they emphatically declared "I have a copy of Cat Power, sitting in a trash dumpster behind The Grill in Athens, performing all of Loaded in arbitrary order for three small children and a Furby.".



I mean, everyone has a Cat Power story about how they paid 25 bucks to see her in some smokey club, she showed up half an hour late smelling of cigarettes, fear, and Grandma Myrtle's Ol' Fashioned WhiskeyPie Surprise, broke a guitar string and suddenly began blaming it on herself, her mom, the guy in the front row, started crying, screamed at the audience and left, with a total on-stage time of maybe fifteen minutes. These things began happening so frequently that when, late in 05, talk of a new Cat Power record began to surface, I started seriously believing the "Fragile Chan" (as I'd dubbed her) was a well-executed PR stunt. My encounter with her at the 40 Watt for a Halloween ADULT. show, at which she stayed long enough to be confronted face-to-face with a wailing, scurvy-lit Nikola Kuperus tearing into the show-opening "Disappoint the Youth" before fleeing from the club (total time around other humans: about twenty minutes), only served to give foundation to that theory.

Also, I still pretty much found her to be god-awfully boring.

Yeah. Well. I can be wrong. My first time through the pre-release of her 06 album The Greatest, sometime between Christmas and New Years 2005, had me floored. I then put it away and forgot about it.




It's a really fucking GOOD album-the addition of a full, live band, and even a sense of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness and parody (think the attitude With Teeth could have possessed if there were more songs like "All The Love In The World" on it), and *gasp* love songs, as well as actual, honest-to-goodness PRODUCTION, turned Cat Power, for me, from a musician who would always be eye-rollingly mentioned over drinks in conversation when I was just trying to get some cute, heavy-lidded indierock princess of a girl-in-jeans-with-haircut to go home with me into an actual singer-songwriter talent.

Most importantly: The Greatest is the only one of Chan's albums that's actually LISTENABLE. And I mean from start to finish.



Cat Power: The Greatest

A song about a fallen boxer, similar in concept to Aimee Mann's infinitely more boring album from this year, but much more emotionally executed here. The thematic concept matters not: with this song kicking off the titular album, it's evident Chan's not going for the obvious here. Unlike in the past, she's not trying to break your heart, it's just...kinda...happening.

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or waterfall could stop me
And then came the rush of the flood
The stars at night turned you to dust...

Cat Power: Hate (Live on Morning Becomes Eclectic)

This was the song on The Greatest that got the most notice. Yes, it's the one with the chorus of "I hate myself and want to die"-note, though, how on this amazing solo-acoustic version, right after Chan announced that for the past, oh, 800 years, she's had drug/alcohol issues and was fed up with them and wanted to start over, that now-infamous lyric gets a bit of a tweaking...may catch in your throat, may have you roll your eyes. For me, it's the former.

(also: a song about Chan hating herself on an album called The Greatest? Once AGAIN, tongue-in-cheek. Love it.)

Cat Power: Hate (Pocket Mix)

A fucking nice, Proggy remix of "Hate" done with a firm hand and a sense of the song's essence by Richard Jankovich, who, in addition to being in Burnside Project (one of those BLOGGER bands), does remixes under the Pocket moniker. If you seriously don't think this works, wait 'til the breakdown around 3:49 in, and listen with headphones. And, to the DJs in the audience, if you do think this works...play this out? And dedicate it to me?

Cat Power: Wonderwall (Live Peel Session)

Chan on John Peel's show, covering "Wonderwall". Really, do I need to say more? Not sure of the time frame on this one, but...fuck. Just....fuck.

Anyway. So that's been my morning. Bleary eyes, cup of coffee, and just a little bit of heart and soul. Or something like that.

Matador's giving the whole thing a repacked look and another shot, since they realize The Greatest really is a fall, sweaters-and-sighs sort of record. When albums with this feel get released at the wrong time, i.e.March-July, they fall into a void and on deaf ears. It makes me happy, in that emotive kinda way, that this is getting another go-round- because I think I need to dust my copy off and put it back into heavy rotation.




Buy the reissued second-shot version of"The Greatest"

Resonator Mag: we kinda never wanted to be the greatest. And pretty much always disappoint the youth.

we're more of a fall, dontcha think?