LIVE: Cat Power's Indie Cred Comes To An End
Monday February 11, 2008 @ 02:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Cat Power Photo by Nikki Ormerod

February 9, 2008
Kool Haus
Toronto, Ontario
By Scott Bryson

It wouldn't be right of us to long for the days when Chan Marshall was a train wreck.

Her years of alcohol addiction and emotional breakdowns may have been titillating for the public, but there's not much doubt that she was in danger of self-destruction. Fans used to flock to Cat Power shows expecting to witness some sort of on-stage disaster or cathartic collapse and they usually got what they were looking for.

Those days are a world away for the new Marshall. She's cleaned up her act, overcome her stage fright and placed her focus on her music. We can't justly begrudge her for wanting to be healthy and productive, but the question has to be asked: Is this the same Cat Power whose devastating Moon Pix could make a grown man weep?

Marshall's latest album of covers, Jukebox, has been well-received. But along with 2005's The Greatest, they have a lot of people wondering if she's traded in her indie cred for a career as an adult-contemporary chanteuse.

There were, in fact, an unusually high proportion of baby boomers at the Kool Haus for Cat Power's latest visit to Toronto. But that wasn't the only thing that didn't seem quite right about the event. Marshall opted to let her backers, Dirty Delta Blues, handle all of the instrumentation, leaving her nothing to do but sing and entertain the crowd. To her credit, Marshall sang beautifully, but she seemed rather out of her element as she roamed around the stage with her microphone. The night's low-key mood was suggestive that she would likely look more at home sitting at a piano or placed behind a guitar.

There were a few moments of exhilaration to be had — "New York" and "Lost Someone" got the crowd mildly energized — but it often seemed obvious that any number of people could be on stage in Marshall's place without having much of an effect on the quality of the show. Perhaps it's because she chose to avoid most of her own creations and focus on covers (though she threw in a few tracks from The Greatest as the night moved forward). Maybe she's just had unrealistic expectations placed on her shoulders. In the end, however, the Jukebox experience was mediocre and not nearly big enough to fill the Kool Haus' expansive space.

Opening for Cat Power were electro-dance duo Appaloosa, who were intriguing if nothing else. Their part French, part fractured-English vocals were often endearing and seemed classic and modern at the same time. Think Edith Piaf meets Ladytron.