Holding Hands With A Soul Sister

Neil Jones on Cat Power at Bristol's Colston Hall

July 9th, 2008

It all started with a support slot for surf rockers Man or Astro Man? back in the early '90s. The setting was a Brooklyn warehouse, and a young lady came out strumming a two-string guitar and singing “no” for fifteen minutes. It didn’t really reach heights of unbridled joy as you can imagine, but Cat Power has moved on since then, the improvisational scene has led to new paths, and tonight a theatre laced with Bristol’s most delicate hipsters lies in wait for a modern soul legend.

The venue, Bristol’s Colston Hall, is a grand setting for us more used to indie at pubs than theatre in halls, the stage-lights beaming down from a million miles in the sky. In fact it’s just like an opera’s about to start, but when Power comes jigging out to music that hasn’t quite started yet, it’s like an old friend has arrived, or a new enigma. Then she starts singing, and it hits us like a whirlwind, a voice that bridges the gap from stuttering modern Western art to ancient soul gods.

Power generates an immediate electricity, and continues to caress it with nods to country, folk and blues legends. She plays off classic standard 'Blue Moon' in a soul number that’s slack, dusty, raw and magnificent, and Lee Clayton’s 'Silver Stallion' in a track that soars with unbridled soul, still jigging away like she’s at home, or at her lived in bar. It’s like an ancient art is being re-conjured, and Power is the magician.

It’s subtly breathtaking stuff, but in the best tradition of enigmas, Power is ever restless. After a first half hour that waters the eyes she unravels a microphone chord and ventures out into the aisles, before slinking off through one of the public entrances for a while and leaving attentions fall on her bass player and pianist, who perform an impromptu jamming session that would have Jools Holland smiling alone.

Then she comes out again to join the duo for a ballad, and it’s like someone turned the electricity back on, her voice soaring again like a warm wind from the deep south, pushed on by the ghost of Dusty Springfield. It’s the kind of stark improvisational song that only Power with her easy kind of soul could manage to make beautiful, and to hear her voice meander here and there throughout it is ever more stunning.

We’re anticipating another half hour of music like the one that’s just gone by, music you can’t hold in the heart or the head but the kind of stuff that makes you buzz on every level, but the wondrous on-record chorus of 'Lived in Bars' succumbs to a jamming session by Power’s hitherto brilliant band, and, barring a shimmering, elegiac performance of 'The Greatest', it’s slightly downhill from here. It’s not that the band drag Power into session muso wankery, they’re far too good and sensible for that, more that the break seems to have put Power into a more interactive state of mind, taking her out of her previous cocoon from which the music seemed so rich.

Still, to call it disappointing after the opening half would be prudish. So often modern Western art is an empty, distant echo of what’s been really grand about folk and Pop culture, but tonight, certainly for the best part, Cat Power has been the living embodiment of it. It’s been like going back in time; holding hands with a soul sister while the sun goes down.

© 2008 Neil Jones

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