the times calls it gorgeous melancholia
ms. chan marshall touches down in minneapolis' varsity theater on saturday for a couple cat power solo acoustic sets. i'm hitting the 9 pm show with young wes.i've heard wildly mixed reviews of her live performances, but i've loved her songs from the taut and scary nude as the news to the warm memphis soul of the greatest. i don't want to over-expect, but ... it should be a very good show in an intimate setting.
posted by christopher uggen @ 3:49 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I've seen her a handful of times and think she's great. Find a good place to sit - as you know this music ain't for dancing. She has a cute shyness about her and moments of undeserved self-deprication. Take a digital recorder and bootleg this baby for the rest of us!
here's a quick recap, since this appears to be the first show on the solo tour. ms. marshall played about 2.5 hours and finished about 50% of the songs she started. it was a friendly-if-not-adoring crowd in a romantic setting lit by candles, with couches, cushy chairs, and rugs on the floor of the old theater. as she hit the stage, with some trepidation she said "there's a lot of people here. a lot of people..." uh-oh.
ms. marshall alternated between an upright piano and an old danelectro or silvertone guitar with loads of reverb. i liked her guitar sound and soft fingerpicking. the vocals were magic in the small room. i only wish she had a good drummer along, though, to keep things moving. there were some beautiful moments and some frustrating ones. for example, ms. marshall sang the opening to "here comes a regular" three or four times, but eventually gave up. her take on some classic covers was fun and intriguing -- blue moon, satisfaction, hit the road jack, house of the rising sun... the song both wes and i loved (a piano tune with vocal riffs and snaps) was a new arrangement of a nina simone cover, wild is the wind."
she was all about the sound. when she stopped mid-song in frustration about sounding flat when she sang into the face of the mic, several folks shouted that it sounded fine and urged her to keep going. she insisted that it sounded terrible and said something like "i'm trying to teach you" why it doesn't sound fine. she sang around the edges for the rest of the show, sometimes using her hands as a barrier between her voice and the mic.
she ended the show by asking for requests, then smoked a cigarette and went into a rap about her favorite airlines, people who died, modern-day electroshock therapy, and 9/11 conspiracy theories. then she walked away. hmmm. like many in the audience, i wanted to somehow protect the barefoot singer from the world. but she's probably more OK than the rest of us. in any case, i'm set to see built to spill next week, which should be a bit more traditional in the finish-songs-you-start sense of the word.
Odd but memorable, I'm sure. Sounds like next week's show will provide some sort of balance.
For the sociologist in you: "You'll get the chance to take the world apart and figure out how it works. Don't let me know what you find out." (from Car)
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