6.10.06: Concert Reviews: Cat Power, Camille
Saw the Chan Marshall/Cat Power show at Town Hall last night. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Well, it helps that she’s both gorgeous and eccentric…and talented. A huge band — brass section, stings, 2 backing singers on a platform, guitar bass drums filled the stage and allowed no total detours from the road map. Her eccentric and often incomplete live shows are legendary — I bought tix for a February show but that whole tour was cancelled. I said hi before the show to Teeny Hodges and others from the Al Green Hi records band — co writers of "Take Me To The River" and other songs. We chatted afterwards downtown — they were as surprised and thrilled as anyone that this combo worked.
Anyway, she kept it together, though her solo portion came really close to the rumored disintegration. Her phrasing is so personal and emotional, and unlike anyone else’s. This combination of Memphis rhythm section and her hesitant yet fully aware and evidently worked out phrasing was unlikely — even Teeny said he’d never heard of her beforehand and the match seemed like a very strange idea — the result is somewhere in the middle of two worlds. Some new thing came into being that had elements of both worlds but that was neither.
She was obviously overjoyed to be holding it all together, sounding good, fit and toned, pulling it off yet still keeping it fragile. It was show business at the service of personal truth, which is amazing when it happens. The audience, for the most part, were fans — they willed her to hold it together, cheered her on and empathized with her tenuous and at the same time very assured and confident take on her new songs…and the cover songs…
Her little solo set was mostly covers — which were almost unrecognizable at first. She plays her own chord progressions under others’ songs ("Wild Is The Wind", "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", etc.) and sings mostly the original words — but she changes the melodies almost totally (there were a few recognizable melodic patches) to fit her own style of melodic phrasing and melodic leaps. Somehow this deconstruction of standards added new meaning to these old songs — they became intensely personal and real, new, as if she had written them all herself — which I guess she was in fact doing. What this means in terms of copyright I can only guess, but creatively it was wonderful.
Camille at Joe’s Pub
I wondered how she would perform the songs from her last CD — the music is mostly vocal sounds, body slaps and tics. Between herself and two guys they did it…occasionally there was some piano or a kick drum, but mostly they created live loops and then supplemented that with live sound making. Musically it doesn’t fit any genre — though there a bit of Björk, Zap Mama and even a little Chanson in there. The show was pretty elaborately staged...she even brought her own lighting person who obviously knew who was going to do what and when, so there was a danger of it all being a little theatrically over-planned and stagy...but she's an amazing performer who maybe does a teeny bit more stage business than Americans are used to, but it never falls into cabaret, as the Brits call it. And she is a great stage presence — a very worked out show but with a slightly anarchic edge. There’s a (studied?) carelessness and chaos that gives an edge, but never falls over it. And the music is extraordinarily good.
