The Thousands

I found a digital camera and two iPods in the neighbour’s hard rubbish a couple of weeks ago – isn’t that ridiculous? Even though none of them worked, I still took it as a momentous sign of the times. Similarly, a Chan Marshall biography seems a tad futuristic. Is it time for this already?

There are lots of interesting tidbits in A Good Woman, for instance the suitably nonsensical origin of the name Cat Power. There’s also poor little Chan’s troubled upbringing, her descent into alcoholism and depression, the house she shared with Bill Callahan in South Carolina, her on-stage tantrums… It’s all in there, and it’s all valid information for us fans. What lets the book down is it reads like a 300 page magazine article. It never really gets under the skin of its subject, which is due at least in part to Marshall’s total lack of cooperation with the project.

Until she decides to actually be a part of something like this (and maybe gets a few more years under her belt), it serves Chan Marshall well to remain enigmatic and difficult. That way, we can prescribe our own meanings to her beautiful songs and not be disappointed by the truth.