The new direction of Cat Power was on shining display at Terminal 5 this past week, and we went to have a look see. This was my first time at the venue and Im going to try and be as positive about it as possible. While its a beautiful space, I feel that its poorly designed both for sight and sound. I stood in a few different spots and the sound seemed to just get increasingly distorted and warped as I went. There was a massive sparkling disco ball though. And hey, first time for a lot of things, this was my first time seeing Cat Power in New York. She has quite a following around here. I always knew that everyone seems to be a fan, but seeing it was something else. The show was sold out and there were like ten scalpers circling the venue, more than Ive seen in a while. Pretty popular show.
Appaloosa opened up. While I only caught one song at the tail end of the set, I got a pretty good idea of what this outfit is all about. Its the standard rig thats ever so popular these days. Pretty woman with French accent and a hair cut, with a dude on mac, keys, knobs, synth and whatnot. They play synth pop dance music that has a longing feel to the lyrics. I do dig the song Sinister but I didnt hear them play it. So if this sounds up your alley, theyre supporting Cat Power for the next week or so but theyll be doing a solo show at the Echoplex in the not too distant.
We waited an hour and change for Cat Power and the Dirty Delta Blues Band to take the stage, and when they did the crowd was ready. She so appropriately opened with New York, one of the many covers off her new record Jukebox, an album that reimagines mostly classic and obscure blues and folk songs. Her new take on this Frank Sinatra gem breathed a bitty bit of life back into a pretty serious karaoke victim. Another thing we opened the set with was some pretty sticky technical issues. Chan was getting feedback from almost every monitor on stage and from the bass it seems. What with her funky little dance dips this proved to be a tangle for the majority of the show. Fortunately it didnt get too much in the way of some good music though. Dirty Delta was in awesome shape and some of these covers came out great. The high point of the show for me would definitely be I Lost Someone. It takes a special person to even consider doing a James Brown cover, probably the hardest act in history to follow. This version was deep though, so beautiful with the blues guitar and church organ, I think the Godfather of Soul would be proud. My ear also picked out Silver Stallion and Poor and Needy as the highlights of the evening.
So, a fun show with a couple of good moments, but a venue thats lacking. I hope they can iron out some of the sound issues in this space, the theory being that even though it looks like a music venue, it might not actually be one. Heh.
