Cat Power Hasn't Lost The Artistic Integrity "That Saved Her Life Some Nights”

On Woman, the lead single from Cat Power’s new, tenth LP, Wanderer, Chan Marshall - the 46-year-old who’s forever and always Cat Power - is joined, in harmonising “feat” guest-spot, by none other than Lana Del Rey. It’s not your standard celebrity collab, though, but something born out of touring together, finding friendship and shared identification.

“Lana Del Rey showed me the kind of camaraderie I hadn’t felt since the ’90s,” says Marshall. “She had shown me evidence that I was part of some musical landscape that she affiliated herself with. Which is au courant, which is right now; not back then, but right now. She helped fortify myself in the idea that my art is ok, that I am ok.”

For Marshall, much of the lead-up to Wanderer was dealing with these concerns: having her current-day output compared to past music, and having its worth critiqued. Earlier in 2018, Marshall came to Australia to truly commune with her musical past: performing her 1998 classic Moon Pix, in full, on its 20-year anniversary. The show was at the Sydney Opera House, as part of Vivid LIVE, but the album was made in Melbourne; Marshall spending a hot summer, long ago, staying in St Kilda, recording at Sing Sing Studios in Richmond. The Opera House show reunited her with the original musicians from the recording of Moon Pix, chiefly Jim White and Mick Turner of Dirty Three.

"Maybe there were moments I questioned my own work, like maybe this is a pile of shit. But, I was proud of my pile of shit.”

“Being invited to do this bizarre recollection of material, after having not played it [together] since 1999, was very emotional,” Marshall offers. “It was like giving the girl from 20 years ago something much more precious and much more valuable than a Grammy, or an Olympic gold medal. I was able to give her joy, and prove to her what she always knew: that she would continue on, that she would become a fruitful person, that she would be someone that felt purpose.”

Marshall continually speaks of her younger self, the one who made Moon Pix, as a different person. “I found her exploration of protection, through writing songs, so tender and so gentle. I saw how difficult things were for her. I saw how fun-loving she was, and how shy,” she says. “[And] that girl from 20 years ago, she believed very much in artistic integrity. It was the thing that saved her life some nights.”

It was a matter of artistic integrity that prevailed over doubts about the worth of Wanderer, and led to Marshall’s divorce with Matador, the mega-indie that had been her label for over 20 years. When she first turned the album in, Matador refused to release it as it was, telling her it should, rather, resemble “a hit record”. But, Marshall says, “I have no interest in hit music. I’m not a bank. I didn’t go to Harvard Business like they did. I’m an artist.”

She still had her doubts, though. Since the release of 2012’s Sun, music had often been sidelined: by health scares, first, then motherhood; Marshall’s first child, a son, born in 2015. “Preparing a space for [her] child” came hand-in-hand with preparing a space for her new album; Marshall moving into a house in Miami where she both nested and built a studio space. Recorded while its maker raised a young child, the resulting record is just as personal, fragile, and ultimately triumphant as any Cat Power LP; Marshall feeling an extra sense of triumph from defying the music biz along the way.

“[Matador] said the record was no good, and I needed to change it,” she says. “So, for one year, as a single parent who’s working - I travel, I sing songs, that’s how I earn a living, how I pay my bills - my emotional state was really up and down, especially regarding business. I had to forget these expectations they’d placed upon me, had to forget that they told me my art was no good. I felt very alone with my child, I felt sad, but I wasn’t a victim. I was fine. I was perfectly fine. I knew they had their own perspective. Maybe there were moments I questioned my own work, like maybe this is a pile of shit. But, I was proud of my pile of shit.”