Music

Real name Charlyn Marie Marshall, she was born in 1972 in Atlanta (USA) and, contrary to appearances, her stage name isn't a declaration of love to the feline gentry.

So as not to keep you waiting too long, let's get straight to the point by answering the question the singer has come to hate. But why Cat Power? No riddles, no hidden meanings. A few hours before taking to the stage on her debut, the artist had to suggest a stage name to the small venue that was hosting her. Her own name seemed impossible. It was then, as she has no doubt recounted hundreds of times, that a man working for Caterpillar entered her field of vision. He was wearing a cap that read Cat Diesel Power. Abracadbra, out came the unsympathetic scent of industrial fuel: Cat Power was born.

Since taking their first steps in the early 90s, Cat Power have forged their own distinctive style. The very noisy “Headlights” in 1993 with Steve Shelley, drummer for Sonic Youth, clearly indicates a noisy artistic filiation. Thereafter, with her frail voice often on the verge of inaccuracy, Cat gradually rounded off the angles, musically at least. From 1995 onwards, with the album Dear Sir, she continued to play the balancing act, never keeping her tongue firmly in her cheek. With astonishment, we discover that PJ Harvey's cousin has migrated to Georgia and chosen Kim Gordon as her godmother.

In later years, she often opted for stripped-down, sometimes acoustic orchestrations, but continued to draw bitterly sweet conclusions about her surroundings and the world she lived in. On her album “What Would The Community Think”, a song such as “Good Clean Fun” is obviously to be taken at face value.

What's even more astonishing is that, unwavering in her trajectory and reluctant to make concessions, the singer managed the feat of expanding her audience while living with the constraints of her burgeoning notoriety. In 1997, she moved to a farm in Oregon and, in a way, decided to practice music as passionately as ever, but as a dilettante without chasing after mirages. Recorded in Australia, the unreal beauty of her fourth album, “Moon Pix”, establishes her as a modern protest singer (“American Flag”) and eco-poetess (“Moonshiner”). It's not hard to see where her musical journey is heading. 

On “Covers” in 2000, she appropriated and transformed refrains as diverse as “Satisfaction” (Rolling Stones) and “I Found A Reason” (Lou Reed). With “Kingston Town”, a traditional song dusted off by Bob Dylan, as well as “Paths Of Victory”, she also makes an appointment with him for the touching tribute she pays him today on stage.

Taking her time as she saw fit, Cat Power recorded new songs every three or four years, five timeless gems in the space of twenty years. Between “You Are Free” (2003) and “The Greatest” (which is not a compilation of the hits she never had in 2006), between “Jukebox” (2008) and “Sun” (2012), it proves impossible to make a choice. Her latest personal compositions on “Wanderer” (2018) even evoke Joan Baez at times, and we're hardly surprised to see Lana Del Rey join her on the obviously feminist “Woman”. 

With her distinctive voice and her determination never to overdo things (less is more, as the English say), Cat Power has the rare quality of literally inhabiting every melody she performs, whether her own or her favorite covers.

With her, no artistic gesture is made without reason. So, when she was asked to take to the stage of London's legendary Royal Albert Hall in 2022, she immediately thought of Bob Dylan's legendary performance in England in 1966, when he traded in his folk-singing clothes, acoustic guitar and harmonica, for his first brush with electricity on stage with “Tell Me, Momma”. Part of the audience was obviously outraged by this alleged crime. On bootleg recordings of the time, you can even hear someone shouting “Judas! However, exegetes and historians will point out that the “Blonde On Blonde” author's cataclysm took place in Manchester in May 1966, not in London. Obviously, as much as the quality of the repertoire, it's also this willingness to kick up a fuss that the American artist has found to her liking. When we said Cat Power was a rebel...

On tour with his “Sings Dylan '66” project:
In Australia (February), Japan (March), Germany, Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Austria (June), as well as:
June 1: Barbican Centre - London (England)
June 4: Glasshouse - Gateshead (England)
June 6: Cirque Royal - Brussels (Belgium)
June 10: Tivoli - Utrecht (Netherlands)
June 22: Théâtre Beaulieu - Lausanne (Switzerland)

(MH with AK - Photo: © Etienne Tordoir)
Photo: Cat Power on stage at the Cactus Festival in Bruges (Belgium) on July 7, 2019