photo, via samantha [flickr]

Cat Power + the Memphis Rhythm Band // the Showbox // 28 November 2006

At last night’s Cat Power show Chan Marshall had food poisoning.

Writing a review feels pointless and unfair. I’ve had food poisoning and when I was sick I didn’t even want to expend the energy required to lift a glass of grape juice; so the fact that she dragged herself onto the stage, sang, and sounded pretty was a huge achievement. It just wasn’t much of a show.

If you’re interested, though, there’s a rundown after the jump.

It was freezing outside, but, fortified with mead [!] Team Metroblogging (Samantha and I) braved the elements, and the wide open doors sucking in icy air at the Showbox. When we arrived, the Memphis Rhythm Band — all eleven of them — were arrayed on the stage, passing around solos and doing their best to warm up the crowd. We suspect that they’re all great musicians, but after a while they just aren’t interesting enough to hold our attention.

Eventually, they transition into the opening strains of “the Greatest”, stretching it out, while Chan Marshall joins them, gains her composure, and starts singing. Its just as nice as on record, the breathy vocals, swelling strings, lovely pianos and backup singing. She pantomimes along with the lyrics, making the performance feel like a little game of charades. From there, she works through the first few tracks of the new album, throwing in a chicken dance in between for good measure. And here we were before the show, worried that the stage antics were a thing of the past.

Fairly early in the show, there appears to be a wardrobe malfunction. Marshall struggles with her skinny jeans, complaining that she bought a size two inches too small for her twenty-eight inch waist. To compensate, she buttons and unbuttons them, tugging to hold them up.

Along the way, there’s a quiet version of “Where is My Love?” and a raised-lighter duet with a dredlocked guitar player from the band. She takes a break and there’s more filler from the Memphis Rhythm Band. I get kind of excited when they announce that their next sing is “Since You’ve Been Gone”, but it turns out not to be the Kelly Clarkson version.

The highlight of the show is when the band files off the stage and we get a few solo Cat Power numbers. Her voice is amazing and the time that she spent alone onstage was riveting, including an awesome cover of “House of the Rising Sun”.

However, she starts cracking jokes about puking, soon giving way to long pauses and near collapses. By the time the microphone stand malfunctions, she’s talking about feeling sick and needing to faint. Out come the handlers and the band, and off goes Chan. They seem to be stalling, chanting over and over about Seattle or getting us to cheer for Cat Power.

Now would be a great time to mention the abundance of insanity in the crowd. Aside from the soulful front-to-back couple dancing, a lone maniac starts rocking out bouncing through the audience. Drunk people call out cheers of encouragement from the overcrowded bar section. We wonder if someone slipped a crazy magnet on our jackets, because we always seem to attract this sort of oddness at shows.

A few rounds in the purgatorium, she comes out for a couple of covers. There’s her radical interpretation of “Satisfaction” and a more conventional version of the obligatory “Crazy” {What kind of contract does Gnarles Barkley have that everyone has covered this song over the course of the year?}. Throughout, she’s been looking weak and she fiinally succumbs to the food poisoning, apologizing profusely before being assisted backstage.

Samantha thinks that in general the whole thing felt like the end of a chick flick, like someone had learned their lesson and there was The Memphis Rhythm Band popping up to escort them out of the final shot. {Complete with a fairy godmother on backup}. And that’s where her main problem with the show lies: because Chan was so sick/looney last night there was too much band and too much filler. It was flat, which it shouldn’t have been with Chan’s voice and a stage stocked with a pack of freaking soul musicians. The Memphis Rhythm Band were too many people and too well mixed to be soul or alt-blues or whatever they want to be, and Chan’s vocals were mixed in there too well, so the whole thing quickly began to feel like it belonged in an elevator.

I agreed, with the complication of feeling like part of vampiric crowd who kept demanding more singing from someone who was obviously feeling deathly. The fact that she tried to rally and put ferocious energy into some of her singing was impressive, but I still hate feeling like I’m complicit in someone else’s agony. I know that this was part of the old show and some people got a kick out of the uncertainty, but with the cold theater as people exited to the bar and the obvious onstage difficulties, I just felt uncomfortable. Like I said, her albums have plenty of gorgeousness and she has the potential for compelling stage presence, I just hope that she’s feeling better soon. Food poisoning is the worst.