Raw, deep, and always true to her inimitable self, Indie artist Chan Marshal’s (a.k.a Cat Power) unique music and style have given her a huge following over a long career. Constantly changing and always honest, the American singer will headline the musical acts at this year’s The Script Road – Macau Literary Fesitval.
Born Charlyn Marie Marshall in Atlanta in 1972, Chan Marshall took her stage name from the words on a trucker’s hat “Cat Diesel Power”, and moved to New York City in the early 1990s. She made a couple of records before signing with indie label Matador in 1996, and since then the singer-songwriter, musician, occasional actress and model has become a familiar name in many in-the-know music lover circles.
The 1996 album, What Would the Community Think, was her third, and was followed by the critically acclaimed Moon Pix (1998), which many describe as her weirdest album, in a long line of weird albums.
By 2000, Marshall stated that she had grown tired of touring with her own material and this resulted in a series of shows where she provided musical accompaniment to the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Combining original material and many covers, a lot of the material would later be released on her fifth album, The Covers Record, released in 2000.
In 2003 Marshall released You Are Free, which featured guest musicians such as Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl and Warren Ellis, and became the first charting Cat Power album, reaching 105 on the Billboard 200.
Around this time, Marshall was embraced by the fashion industry for her “neo grunge” look, playing muse to designers such as Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquière. This move would later seal her credentials in 2006, when the emperor of fashion, Karl Lagerfeld, saw her smoking a cigarette outside the Mercer Hotel in New York. In October that year she became the celebrity spokesperson for a line of jewellery from Chanel, and Lagerfeld chose her for the soundtrack to his Spring 2007 fashion show and also photographed her for a magazine feature.
In addition to her own work, Marshall has contributed guest vocals on several albums. She performed a duet with model Karen Elson on an English cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je t’aime… moi non-plus’ for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited. She also sang lead vocal on the Ensemble track ‘Disown, Delete’ and reworked ‘Revelations’ with Yoko Ono for Ono’s 2007 album Yes, I’m a Witch. In 2007, Marshall contributed songs to the soundtrack of Ethan Hawke’s movie The Hottest State, and also to the Academy Award-winning film Juno, whose soundtrack featured her cover of the song Sea of Love.
2006 was an important year for the artist. She released her seventh album, The Greatest, a Southern soul-influenced album of new material that opened at 34 on the Billboard 200, with critics noting its relatively “polished and accessible” sound, and predicting it was “going to gain her a lot of new fans.”
2006 also saw her nominated in the ‘Best International Female Solo Artist’ category at the annual BRIT Awards, and become the first female solo act to win the Shortlist Music Prize when The Greatest was voted album of the year.
In War Kar Wai’s 2007 film, My Blueberry Nights, Marshall played the small part of Katya, opposite Jude Law. The romance/drama/road film was the director’s first feature in English and Marshall’s role went beyond the screen as she also sang on the film’s soundtrack.
Cat Power’s most overtly pop record to date came in the form of Sun, released in 2012, and in an interview with British newspaper The Telegraph in June 2013, she described it as a manifesto for “personal power and fulfilment”. The album’s warm electronic pulse and piano-led grooves is also her biggest seller to date, becoming the first album in Matador’s history to crack the Billboard top ten.
One of the central themes of Sun is the idea of transcending an ordinary life, of empowerment through reinvention.
“Ordinary is a thing that everybody around the world wants,” she explains. “The American Dream, that security. So being a superhero is basically the alternative. You can be whatever you like, but you have to be a fucking superhero to make a difference in this life.”
However, it was during an interview with MTV Style, when she responded to the question “What or whom have been the biggest style influences on you?” that we got a better insight into this complex, raw and true artist when she answered:
“Big question. Human struggle, rock and roll, literature, underbellies and underdogs of the world and throughout history, the oppression of humanity through organised religion and its strikingly positive effect on those who need it yet deserve a better life through their own government, nature, the sea, the countryside, all animals, all terrains, friendship, loss of loved ones, learning in general, magic and dreams”.
Cat Power will perform
on March 29 at 8pm
at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Macao
Tickets available at the
Portuguese Bookshop
and CotaiTicketing
MOP350
