Cat Power at Mill City Nights, Minneapolis (10/30/12)

W♥M160: Cat Power (10 mins) Tour Dates 11/02/12 Vancouver, BC - Vogue Theatre 11/03/12 Seattle, WA - Showbox SoDo 11/04/12 Portland, OR - McMenamins Crystal 11/06/12 Oakland, CA - Fox Theater 11/08/12 Hollywood, CA - Palladium 11/26/12 Amsterdam - Paradiso 11/28/12 Cologne - E-Werk 11/29/12 Berlin - Huxleys Neue Welt 12/01/12 Hamburg - Grosse Freiheit 36 12/02/12 Munich, Germany - Theatre Fabrik 12/03/12 Milan, Italy - Alcatraz 12/04/12 Bologna, Italy - Estragon 12/06/12 Zurich - Volkshaus 12/10/12 Paris - Trianon 12/12/12 London - Roundhouse 12/14/12 Brussels, Belgium - AB Club Read More Cat Power Just a reminder that Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, is coming to Minneapolis at the Mill City Nights tomorrow, October 30th. I will be there, will you? ...

Cat Power stopped by Mill City Nights in Minneapolis, last night, October 30th. This show was co-sponsored by The Current 83.9 FM and the 400 Bar.

THE ENTRANCE BAND

The Entrance Band, or as Guy Blakeslee introduced himself, "I am Entrance," opened up the show. I've concluded that he normally has a full band, but with last night's (Milwaukee) last minute replacement for Xray Eyeballs, it was just solo Entrance. I thought I read that his music was "psychedelic rock," but looking at the black attire and dark lyrics ("I want to die without no fear" on "Prayer of Death") it sounds more like depressing goth music to me?

I've seen Cat Power before, many, many years ago at the 400 Bar. Back then, it was just Chan Marshall with her grand piano. She spent most of the time looking down and closing her eyes as she sang her songs. This is fine for the type of slow-moving, introspective music she was playing, but last night was a different story. She had a full band, a movie projection (that synced to the songs they were playing), and was presented as a full "rock" show. I don't know if this worked for Cat Power, I would've been happy if it was just one instrument to accompany her beautiful smoky voice.

Cat Power photo by Audrey

It started off well enough, with Bob Dylan's "If You See Her, Tell Her Hello" song to introduce Cat Power, but as they played their second song, "Sun," you can clearly see Marshall is distracted by something. She kept pointing to someone in the audience with a "cut it out" gesture. This went on for a minute before she stopped the song and had a one way conversation with a photographer.

"There ain't no press passes," Marshall muttered, "I'm here for you [referring to the audience], not them [pointing to the photographers]."

There must have been a miscommunication; no one said anything about "no photo policy" for this show. I was on the other side of the stage and didn't see what was going on, but the story I was told later by another photographer was that securities came and had photographers leave their gear behind the front desk or were asked to leave to show.

Cat Power Setlist

Outside of photo drama and someone passing out/had a seizure during "Nothing But Time," the rest of the show went on without any problems. I believe the setlist is the same everynight because of the projected movies. Speaking of which, the Mill City Nights' projection is one the best I've seen from all the venues in Minneapolis, image was crisp and bright.

Marshall performed all the songs from the recent Sun album, with the exception of "Real Life." You know how I feel about bands performing new material, it's tough because they want to play the new stuff but fans wants to hear the old stuff. It felt unbalance with 80% of the set were all new songs. Even classics like "The Greatest" had a different take, which you probably you wouldn't have recognized it from the LP version.

The band ended the show with the new single, "Ruin," with no encore.

Cat Power is currently on tour in support of Sun, out now via Matador Records. She recently announced on Instagram that she may cancel her European tour due to bankruptcy and health struggles due to Angioedema. We have nothing but well wishes for her and hope she makes a full recovery.

Please listen to our wrap-up for the post show for Cat Power with Emily and Dan. Free download of "Ruined" available at Matador Records, which is song of the show for W♥M#160.

Cat Power at Mill City Nights, Minneapolis (10/30/12)

--
W♥M Radio is available on iTunes, please subscribe!

Subscription Options
Subscribe on iTunes
Subscribe via RSS
Add to Google
Add to Yahoo
____
Archive of this show at archive.org. More information on podomatic.com

vu () ♥ catpowermusic.com ♥ theentranceband.com

Comments

[Chris]

Hello from down at the bottom of the Mississippi River, since you’re apparently up near the top. I guess Chan and Guy are good pals because I saw Entrance (solo) open for Cat Power (solo) at the House Of Blues Parish in New Orleans in Sept. 2004. His shock of hair was impressive, but I was so irritated by what I saw as his bummer-folk shtick that I left after about 4 songs* & walked a few blocks to the short-lived Virgin Megastore & listened to a mid-‘80s Siouxsie & The Banshees used CD, which I didn’t like. Chan’s long, meandering set was… interesting. She didn’t play any “hits.” She did the first half of one of my favorites, “Keep On Runnin’,” after I spent about an hour trying to telepathically beg her to play it. (This totally made my month, but since it did evidently work, I got freaked out & have never tried that again.) It was probably a lot of hip / obscure cover songs, likely a few being repetitive NOLA soul & R&B tunes that singers like her and countless others worldwide claim to love. (I once read some article in which Chan called Mary J. Blige her idol.) She stopped many songs and randomly restarted them later, or even did them twice, and made her usual apologies to the crowd for being, in her eyes, untalented, a waste of our time, stupid, etc., & saying things like “You all hate me.” I could finally see the tales of her mental instability were true. This was a month before her equally-frustrating & meandering Speaking For Trees DVD came out. I had missed a show by her in summer ‘97 at the tiny Mermaid Lounge, w/ Two Dollar Guitar (Steve from Sonic Youth). At that show, she allegedly turned her back to the crowd and read from the newspaper through the mic at one point. I did see her one other time, in late ‘13, with a full band I believe, also in NOLA. She seemed much more confident, had no apology issues, & wore a Wu-Tang Clan shirt.
(*I also walked out on Oval – just a bored-looking guy “playing” his laptop – while opening for Tortoise in the same city in May ‘98. I found it insulting, but in hindsight wish I had stayed for his full set.)