Cat Power talks about wandering and wonder.
Cat Power tries to speak while being mobbed by a dog.
“Sweet, sweet boy,” says Chan Marshall, the songwriter and singer who has for more than 20 years performed and recorded with the feline moniker. “What a sweet, sweet honey pie. … Do you have a dog?”
I mention Freddy, our skittish but loving Chihuahua, who was called “unadoptable” by the shelter.
“They should never use that word. I love those dogs,” Marshall says. “They’re the most empathetic.”
Empathy was on Marshall’s mind when she started making her new album, “Wanderer,” her first since “Sun” six years ago. Between “Sun” and “Wanderer,” she had a son and also split from the record label she’d worked with since the mid-’90s. So the album found her in a time full of wonder and insecurity, playing nurturer and needing nurturing. It’s a gorgeous piece of music, and she talked ethereally about some of its themes and lyrics.
Q: The title track opens the album in a fascinating way. Melodically, I hear this faint echo of “In the Pines,” but it’s not a dirge at all. It sounds kind of like a whispered, ancient prayer.
A: I love that you said that. “Ancient.” It’s definitely about seeking something. Resolving, too, but mostly seeking. This wandering in my soul. Rather than thinking about your body, it’s more about the soul. Finding truth in yourself and the world around you. I think as we get older, maybe we wish we had more of that elasticity with the world around us that we had when we were young. As you get older, I don’t want to say you’re “forced” to acknowledge the world around us. But there’s more responsibility to know about it.
Q: The song also juxtaposes that word with “wonder,” which creates an interesting tension. To wonder is to be stationary but with no bounds. To wander is to move around, but there are limitations to where you can go.
A: Yes, yes, and both of those words are in the song. The last line is, “Oh, wanderer, I’ve been wondering.” I think I was using wonder to try to translate some of the ideas about wandering. You want wandering spirits. And you also want to be stationary and dreaming. Our minds can release these things that have been bottled or packed away. And I think that’s a good thing.
Q: Do you consider yourself more a wanderer?
A: Oh that sounds wishful. Oh, hi! Sorry, there’s this dog here, and he’s just beautiful. Hello! Sorry, so I just
see the wanderer as like an everyman, an everyone. We all have our fate, you know, in this time cycle. What am I trying to say? Life is this lesson, and we learn through living. And hopefully that makes us better humans and better to our planet, to our people. That was the idea. To go out and find a way to take all the (expletive) stuff and find a way to make us better and closer to solving problems. We always find groups of people who look like us and talk like us. But I traveled a lot as a kid and as an adult, and I feel like we can learn more through wandering. I don’t want to call it “enlightenment.” I don’t feel I can use that word yet. And maybe “purpose” is too much. But something better.
Q: There is a feeling of outsider-ness in some of the songs.
A: I guess I realized with all the conforming groups and cliques, some people like me felt like they never fit in. You go get the perfect hairdo and think you’ll find a perfect place in the world, and you don’t. Maybe that’s who this record is for. People who want to do their own thing but still feel connected.
Q: You talked about that shift in perspective between your early youth and now. Do you detect ways parenthood has changed that? It’s not a baby record in the traditional sense of bright, optimistic songs.
A: Oh, yes. It, caring for a child, having a soul in your belly, it makes you reflect on things differently. Having someone connected to you that way. It had a lot to do with my constitution of self in making the record the way I did. Meeting him has been so interesting, every day you learn something new, and a little bit of the onion peels back. It exposes this brilliant, luminescent love that I needed so desperately and that I didn’t think I knew I needed. Or didn’t think I deserved. Being a parent gave me that. And also this protective spirit energy. There are new fears that old experiences don’t prepare you for.
Q: “Woman” caught my attention and held it for a long spell. The cage reference is interesting: You describe it as both a suit and a weapon. Which makes sense, I guess, because a cage can be something that entraps as well as protects.
A: I’m glad you got the line about it being a suit. You’re the only person I’ve talked to who mentioned that. It’s sort of about how I’m this tomboy, but it speaks to why I chose to wear a dress when I’m out on this record cycle. I felt like I always wore this suit, this tomboy suit. I guess it’s also related to this time in limbo, making a record that my label didn’t think was any good. So I thought, “OK, I’m not a good artist. I need to do something else with my life.” But people like Nick Cave and Lana del Rey reached out to me, even when I had no clear idea if this record would come out or if I’d ever make another. Lana offered me the chance to tour Europe with her. And I asked her to sing on it. I wanted someone to sing on it that wasn’t me, so it wasn’t just a sad Cat Power song. So it could be this multidimensional thing. I think other women feel this way at some point, girls, women, transgender women. Having another voice meant it wasn’t just me with a protest sign in the street by myself.