THE SHED

Cat Power Gives First Interview Previewing “Sun”

Cat Power Talks of Pride and Heartbreak On New Album Sun

From the British publication The Stool Pigeon.

Chan Marshall is counting down from 10. “Nine!” The phone drops with a clatter. “Eight!” She hops out of bed. “Seven!” She runs around her room, yelping numbers until out of earshot.

It’s over two months until Sun — her first album of original material in six years — is finally released and, given this is her first interview in some time, she’s getting fired up… much to the alarm of her pet bulldog, Mona.

“My dog is wondering, ‘Why is she counting backwards from 10?’ She jumped off the bed like, ‘Oh God, is it really happening now?’”

It’s noon at LA’s Chateau Marmont, the hotel where John Belushi died of a drug overdose, where F. Scott Fitzgerald suffered a heart attack, and where Led Zeppelin rode motorbikes through the lobby. Marshall likens the hotel to “a secret garden, a strange vortex of souls” and so it seems a fitting place to find her reflecting on a backstory that could rival the Chateau for its ups and downs.

In the 17 years she’s been recording as Cat Power, the music of Charlyn (shortened to Chan and pronounced ‘Shawn’) Marshall has continually evolved. There have been bare and brittle songs of emotional fragility, meaty Memphis soul and, now, vibrant pop with a pulsing electronic undercurrent. Along the way, she learned to refine the range of her smoky voice, grab a song by its guts and build up a devotional following. But there was always a sideshow.

It began with Marshall’s unsettled upbringing, growing up in bars through the Southern states as she shuttled between her divorced parents — a pianist father and hippy mother. After dropping out of school, she moved to New York at the age of 20 and grafted away until recording her first two albums, 1995’s Dear Sir and 1996’s Myra Lee, on the same day. Their sparse, hypnotic heartache led to a deal with Matador, a relentless touring schedule and a turbulent ascent to fame.

Marshall would combat stage fright with intoxication, giving tearful performances that ended abruptly. The confessional lyrics portrayed a troubled soul, the interviews suggested an eccentric personality, but fans warmed to her openness. The singer suffered a breakdown in 2006 just as her seventh album, The Greatest, proved a commercial breakthrough. But by then the gaps between releases were lengthening and once recovery yielded a second covers album in 2008’s Jukebox, Cat Power went quiet.

The new album Marshall proclaimed ready in 2006 started to feel too painful and personal to put out. Instead, she settled into a relationship with Giovanni Ribisi, nurturing a life at home with the actor and his teenage daughter in LA. Today, Marshall is still raw from their recent break-up, but Sun feels like the 40-year-old’s strongest work yet. It’s the first time she’s played all the instruments and produced an album herself, having honed the material in stages before recording it in Miami and Paris with Philippe Zdar (better known as one half of Cassius).

The extra preparation shows. It’s a significant break from previous albums and while the depth and darkness remain, Marshall sounds sharper, fresher and defiantly assured. In conversation, she buzzes with childlike giddiness, her stream of consciousness sweeping along so quickly that sentences fragment into tangents and dead ends. There are repeated apologies for incoherence or inarticulacy, and on more sombre subjects her chipper tone fades to a whisper, but throughout Marshall sounds genuinely relieved to be on the on the brink of a long-awaited return.

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