Jukebox Heroine: Cat Power at Terminal 5

There was plenty to bitch about at Cat Power's Wednesday show, and it begins, of course, with the venue. Terminal 5 remains an awful place to see a show. Only half of the 3,000-capacity crowd can find a spot that affords them both unobstructed views and good sound—the other half either can't see the stage or are stuck under low ceilings ruin the sonic quality.

That's if there is such a thing as sonic quality. Whoever was behind the soundboard on Wednesday had either skipped soundcheck or was asleep at the knobs, or was just plain incompetent. For almost the entire show, the backing Dirty Delta Blues Band's music took front-and-center, drowning out the vocals that had attracted the sold-out crowd; and feedback was so incessant that Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, could not get through a single song without an ear-busting squelch interrupting her...

After being a surprisingly good sport about the whole debacle, Marshall, after politely trying to address these issues with the sound techs, finally voiced her irritation about halfway through the show. "This feedback is hurting my ears," Marshall declared. "A lot." But instead of throwing a tantrum and storming off stage, Marshall claimed the role of a true professional. The show, as it were, must go on.

And this is where the praise comes in. From the moment Marshall walked on stage, she was "on." The too-cool-for-schoolness, the unenchanting volatility, the extended and maddening momentum-breaking gaps in between songs, the very train-wreckedness of her persona was, at least in the moment, replaced by a woman who seemed eager to please her adopted hometown crowd. Marshall shuffled and pranced around stage, blowing kisses and saluting the crowd, coquettishly curtsying and dramatically bowing before launching into her first song, Sinatra's "New York," the opening track of her latest release, [Jukebox].

The album, which debuted on the Billboard charts two weeks ago at #12, sold nearly 30,000 copies in its first week. This may well signal the end of her days as indie underground "secret" and the beginning of something akin to—ugh—mainstream popdom. Case in point: the show at Terminal 5 was the largest crowd she had headlined for in New York (she sang in front of a much bigger audience last September at Madison Square Garden, but she was opening for Interpol). It seems that finally, much to their dismay, Cat Power's longtime fans are now going to have to share her with the rest of the world, maybe even Top 40 radio.

Not as if they didn't see this coming. In the past two years, Marshall has transformed herself from the quintessential drug-addled Village starving artist to the mostly-sober muse of Karl Lagerfeld. Despite this evolution, Marshall doesn't seem to play up her cosmopolitan glamour. Wednesday night she looked decidedly more tomboy (albeit the hottest tomboy you've ever seen) than Chanel girl. And instead of relying on her good looks, she seemed determined to bury her reputation as a moody and unstable performer, or at least make up for past stage lameness. For the duration of the nearly two-hour set—which by some standards is a marathon these days—Marshall seemed dedicated to giving her fans their money's worth (with or without the help of the sound guy).

That being said, it was still, well, a Cat Power show. Meaning, it was, at times, tough to endure. Her sultry, smoky voice is still seductive in her physical presence, possibly even more so, but the ambience that is created in the studio is absent in concert. The band isn’t nearly as tight. And her re-arrangements and improvised phrasing just don’t work. Songs that are slow to begin with retard to a lethargic crawl, or grind to a halt altogether. At times it’s painful, hearing your favorites getting butchered by their mother. But that's okay. Most of the people who shell out $40 to see her live know what they're signing up for. They know that even when she’s at her best, Cat Power sounds better on the home stereo. But as long as Marshall keeps showing up like she did Wednesday night, so will they.

Photo by [Ryan Dombal]