Cat brings warmth to Dylan’s chilly brilliance
Cat Power
Sings Dylan Royal Albert Hall, London ★★★★★
Weyes Blood
And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow Out Friday ★★★★★
If you long to hear Bob Dylan’s classic songs performed live, there’s one singer you need to avoid: Dylan himself. On tour last month, he played nine tracks from his latest album and none from his Greatest Hits. But now here comes salvation, in the shape of a soul singer.
Cat Power, nee Chan Marshall, is not just a lovely voice. With three cover albums under her belt, she has made a name for herself as a bold interpreter, and this project is particularly fearless.
She is recreating Dylan’s set from 1966, when he horrified the folk purists halfway through the show by bursting into folk-rock. ‘Judas!’ someone shouted at him in Manchester. It turned out to be a fan named Keith, who later admitted to regretting it.
Power, who wasn’t born then, shows why people might have been shocked, playing up the contrast between the folk and the rock.
The first half is studious, reverential – just voice and acoustic guitar, with the odd smudge of harmonica. She adds depth to Desolation Row and transforms
Just Like A Woman, infusing it with lived experience.
It’s not just that she is female; it’s that she is 50, and Dylan was only 25 when he wrote it.
Suddenly a six-piece band joins her, and you feel the full force of rock
’n’ roll – the noise, the verve, the swagger. A switch has been flipped, not just from acoustic to electric, but from monastic to euphoric.
When the inevitable cry of ‘Judas!’ rings out, Power is ready with a good-humoured retort: ‘Jesus!’
In an interview beforehand, she said she didn’t want to make Dylan’s songs her own. She ends up doing so without trying, just because she’s a natural. Her airy warmth suits his sometimes chilly brilliance, making the magic less intellectual, more sensual, more musical.
Tell Me Momma is good, LeopardSkin Pill-Box Hat better, Ballad
Of A Thin Man best of all. You go away hoping that Power will turn the show into a live album – and do something similar with the songs of Leonard Cohen.
Weyes Blood is another pseudonym to conjure with. Born Natalie Mering, she’s 34, from Pennsylvania, and has made five albums in various styles.
Her latest is rock ballads, a feminine twist on the tradition of Paul McCartney and Pink Floyd.
Mering writes alone, which is unheard of these days, and sings spectacularly well. Murmuring one minute, soaring the next, she pulls you into her world.