The Greatest or just plain difficult by
It must be frustrating to be Cat Power's record company. When the talented yet quirky singer/songwriter/ musician recently released her latest album, The Greatest, Matador Records swiftly slapped stickers on the CDs boldly marking their content "original" and "unreleased." They wanted to clarify that it was neither a "Greatest Hits" package as the title implied, nor a repeat format of 2000's The Covers Record, an album interpreting other artists' work: something most artists do much later in their career. But not Cat Power (AKA Chan Marshall), who has always called the shots in her career while successfully building a strong following for her desolate, hauntingly soulful stripped down rock.
Looking further back, can you imagine Matador's shock when in 2004, instead of turning in a regular CD, she turned in "Speaking For The Trees," the 3-part box set including an audio CD, glossy 64-page illustrated booklet and DVD (a grueling to watch, two-hour outdoor solo gig that only her truly diehard fans can appreciate)? Taped in the woods with a single-shot, lock-down camera and microphone set about 25 feet away from her (too far), the audio was so poor the forest's crickets were often louder than the artist. To their credit, the label's publicity department put a nice spin on the minimalist affair, citing its "grainy" daring cinematic qualities and comparing it to Warhol.
But all of that is nothing compared to the fact they must constantly deal with her erratic, neurotic behavior during both her live shows (she often walks offstage when an audience member upsets her, or falls to the floor and starts rolling for no apparent reason) and press interviews (she's been known to go silent for half an hour during some).
So is Cat Power the greatest? Should she be commended for shunning the superficialities of the showbiz world? Or is she just another whiney self-absorbed artist who gets away with these antics because she makes great music? More important, what will her two shows with the Memphis Rhythm Band bring this week: Will she walk offstage after four songs or suddenly turn her back on the audience? Or will she pleasantly surprise all and deliver one of her exceptionally charged live performances? Nobody knows. Cat Power is too unscripted and unpredictable. Got to love her for that.