Cat Power - Two Fists of Solid Rock

I was first drawn to Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall) late one night in the winter of 1999. Irish channel TV3's short-lived and much missed music programme The Green Room, hosted by Darragh Purcell, featured an interview with a very emotional young American lady called Chan, as she sipped on Jack Daniels and got tearful about life, poetry and the Velvet Underground.

She was discussing her new record at the time called The Covers Record. It featured stark reinventions of tracks by the aforementioned Velvet Underground and also the likes of The Rolling Stones, Nina Simone and Bob Dylan. I was drawn instantly to her voice - a haunting fragile southern whisper.

She vanished off my radar for a number of years after that. Then, one day in 2003 I just happened to be in a music store the very day her new record You Are Free was released. Unlike the beautiful Covers Record this was an album of mostly original material. I was fascinated to find out more about this peculiar young woman I had seen on TV four years earlier.

You Are Free didn't invite me into the world of Chan Marshall as such, but rather kidnapped me by gunpoint and blind folded me. It was a world, part of which I was glad not be an inhabitant of, part of which I felt I was born into and never really left. I was at home but treadng new soil all at once. I thought such feelings when listening to a record were past me. You Are Free was the kick up the ass I needed to remind me that those days are not behind me and never will be.

On the track Names Chan reflects on a number of childhood friends whose destinies range from the tragic to the unknown. Good Woman is, for me, one of the songs of the decade - a sad tale of a couple going their separate ways, as being together is destructive despite their love. It's lyrically simple but all the more biting and honest because of it - I want to be a good woman and I want for you to be a good man. This is why Im leaving and this is why I cant see you no more.

I Dont Blame You is a sympathetic tale of a reluctant hero, a victim of rock mythology. It is quite possibly an ode of Kurt Cobain but there is a view that Chan could well have been singing about herself - Just because they knew your name doesn't mean they know from where you came. What a sad trick you thought that you had to play.

Notoriously unpredictable as a live performer, Chan has for years been prone to stage fright. This was all the more tragic given her unique ability as a songwriter and a singer. Yet in early 2006 Chan released her latest record The Greatest. It is a major musical departure from anything she has done previously. Outside of the stark and hollow Hate, the album is a southern soulful rebirth. Former Al Green Band guitarist and Memphis soul innovator Tennie Hodges is at the backbone of the record, taking charge and leading the band and backing singers, re-igniting the soul of Memphis and reinventing Chan all at once.

The impact of this new lease of life can be seen currently as Chan finally steps up to the mic in a manner that has painfully eluded her previously. At last she seems to be finding her comfort zone on the stage. It's only right that she should. She is a woman with a gift that should be fully realised. The young woman I saw on TV in 1999 is still fighting. But for now she's winning. No wind nor waterfall can stall her. I hope it remains so.

May her voice go with you.

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