For her very first show at the Royal Albert Hall, American singer-songwriter Chan Marshall (who carries out as Cat Power, the name of her very first band) chose to recreate Bob Dylan’s near-legendary 1966 program at the august place, the last stop on the wild trip where the folk troubadour stunned fans by going electrical.
A fantastic interpreter of other individuals’s tunes in addition to a noticeably extreme songwriter herself, the 50-year-old Marshall is understood to be a Dylan acolyte, even calling him God Dylan. Therefore she approached what may have been a whimsical homage in a spirit of practically spiritual veneration, as did the audience.
The phase was poorly lit, and the substantial auditorium pregnant with hushed silence as a semi-acoustic guitar chose the theme to She Comes from Me. When Marshall’s soft voice drifted in with the renowned (and, in the context, paradoxical) opening lines (” She’s got whatever she requires, she’s an artist, she do not recall”) the result was suspenseful, proof that we remained in for something more than simple facsimile.
Marshall sang as herself, not mimicing her hero, with loose, eccentric phrasing however none of Dylan’s biting drawl, sinking into every poetic line as if looking for individual significance. There was no melismatic showboating. Microtones in her voice, subtle resonances of abundant melodiousness invested every note with charm.
And what tunes she needed to sing! The transcendent magic of early Dylan classics still struck house 56 years on: Visions of Johanna, Desolation Row, Much Like a Lady, Mr Tambourine Male. In 1966, no-one had actually heard tunes like these prior to. In 2022, they become part of a heritage that has actually affected whatever that followed, yet stay breathtaking by themselves.
