Allow me to take the moral high road for a moment of your time: I am concerned for Chan Marshall. The more I hear about her new lease on life, the weirder I feel inside. A burgeoning acting career, spokesperson for Chanel, "candid interviews" about alcoholism and depression? It feels wrong -- not like Dylan doing a Victoria's Secret commercial, but like she's apologizing for the music she's made and acknowledging that ridiculous, tired assumption about "depressing music." What happened to the person who wrote "No Sense"? Or "Shaking Paper"? Or "Satisfaction"? Well, we know what happened to the person who wrote that last one: he's been catatonic for years. Cat Power's best songs destroy with each line and transcend with single words, something infinitely hard to do when good lyrics are so 1995. The sound of a solitary person in a dark room -- nothing else let in, physical or otherwise (other than the occasional Beastie Boys loop) -- that's the Cat Power I miss. Come back down here, pretty pretty please with a skull on top.
HEY, Y'ALL PUMPED FOR THE TOUR NOW???!!:
* Built to Spill
Photo: Mark Whitely