Chan Marshall isn’t ready for me. “Are you a journalist? Oh Jesus, oh Lord.” We’re speaking on the phone – Marshall is in her hotel room, I’m in the lobby downstairs, after my knock at her door went unanswered.

, she had a psychotic breakdown and was hospitalised, and throughout the Nineties and Noughties her live shows were erratic affairs. She would turn her back to the audience, moon them, encourage them to sue her, slur through a few songs, and then walk off without finishing the takım.

While in Atlanta, Marshall played her first live shows kakım support to her friends' bands, including Magic Bone and Opal Foxx Quartet.[22] In a 2007 interview, she explained that the music itself was more experimental and that playing shows was often an opportunity for her and her friends "to get drunk and take drugs".

Things are better these days, especially since she had her son – though lockdown got to her for a moment. “I broke down one afternoon,” she says. “I think it was month six. And I was just sitting there and I don’t know what happened, but I just went inside my head.

It was partly innate, though – Marshall saf a knack for distilling existential ennui into three-minute songs. In 1998, when she was 26 and had learnt a few more chords, she recorded what would become her breakthrough record, the vulnerable, critically adored Moon Pix

At this point, she abandons the second-person pretence. “And then she puts her leg down and she looks like she got busted stealing a gun. And she looks at me and her face starts to change.

“It’s one of those things,” she says, clicking that pen again. “It’s like when you’re standing on a bridge and you’re looking over and you’re trying to imagine, ‘Would my skull crack or would my legs break off?

Cat Power performing in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2008 Marshall's live shows have been known for their unpolished and often erratic nature, with songs catpower 5852 beginning and ending abruptly or blending into one another without clear transitions.[103] She başmaklık also cut short performances without explanation.

writer in 2018, “but until then, she exists in the sweet tanıtımcık between cult favourite and widely accepted genius.”

[20] The group were booked for a show and had to come up with a name quickly; after seeing a man wearing a Caterpillar trucker cap that read: "Cat Diesel Power", Marshall chose Cat Power kakım the name of the band.[3][21]

During the early-2000s, Marshall was embraced by the fashion industry for her "neo grunge" look, and seen bey a muse by designers Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquière.

If a song touches you, you can read between the lines and find something for yourself. Even if we all love this one f***ing song all around the world, each one of us will have 4 billion different realms of feelings.”

was her first to reach the Billboard Top 10 – but it wasn’t enough. One executive even played her an Adele album for inspiration. She had never seen it kakım a business relationship; evidently, Matador did.

“I have something in my eye and I’m still wet from the shower,” she says, in that same husky American drawl she sings with kakım Cat Power. “Güç you come back in 15 minutes? I’m really sorry sweetie.”

Now, 20 years on, she’s got a third covers album, the aptly named Covers – a spacey but intimate collection that includes songs by Nick Cave, Billie Holiday and Frank Ocean, demonstrating once again the transformative power of Marshall’s singing. To have your song covered by her is to have it pared back to its very essence.