NADIA GUO
<News Editor>
Following a fairly decadent Friday night out at the Hoxton to catch the Flight Facilities’ set, I was glad I had something more low-key planned for Saturday: I had a ticket to see Chan Marshall, better known by her stage name, Cat Power.
My experience of going to the Flight Facilities party can be briefly summed up by what few memories I still carry within my brain which hasn’t been decimated by the wine, pumpkin ale, scotch, and beer I consumed that night. The dancing was good. I vaguely recall making out with a person in a striped sweater in the middle of the dance floor for long periods of time while my friends watched on in jealousy, or most likely, amusement. The music was probably good, considering it was Aussie duo Flight Facilities who were headlining, and everyone who’s anyone knows that these dudes are producing some of the freshest sounds in disco house these days. Sounds that were apparently wholly and unapologetically obliterated from my drunken brain. We got more beers, peed, danced; I made out with Striped Shirt Guy some more, probably peed a few more times. I’m almost positive the bathroom walls were red.
Then I was waking up in bed, totally naked, totally ready to drink an entire gallon of any liquid I could readily get my hands on, or totally puke my guts out. Or both. I didn’t end up puking, but I did take note of the half-eaten Middle Eastern take-out on my kitchen table before going back the fuck to bed for another two hours. When I woke up again, I had a brief flashback of standing in front of the take-out counter at Ghazale’s at Church and Wellesley at some point after the show, pointing enthusiastically to the roasted eggplant through the glass. Ghazale’s is, by the way, the yummiest spot for some late night grub. I’m not exactly sure if this place is open 24/7, but they’re always open and ready to serve whenever I come by, in whatever state I happen to be in, which is good enough for me. Thinking about all this the next morning, I silently congratulated myself for even being able to handle the complexities of a monetary transaction in such a state of blackout drunkenness.
Needless to say, seeing Southern-born, ex-alcoholic folk singer-songwriter super-goddess Cat Power was a good alternative to going out and abusing my body again. I’d bought a ticket to see her ahead of time, and I was going alone because none of my friends were really interested in her music, save my old roommate who had recently exiled himself to rural Northern Ontario to do webcam porn. But that’s a different story. Anyway, Cat Power’s been a staple of my music collection since I was 15. Her stripped-down, acoustic sound was a good backdrop for cultivating teenaged angst in the suburbs. She was here to tour her latest album, Sun, which marks a strong departure from the melancholic quality of her earlier stuff, and is her most upbeat album to date. I was wary of it at first listen. I found some of the self-produced songs much too over-processed and poppy for the Cat Power I was used to, who, as far as I was concerned, didn’t need much beyond a piano, a guitar, and her own rich-as-table-cream, bearing-the-wisdom-and-souls-of-entire-dynasties voice. By the night of the concert, though, I was warming up to songs like “Cherokee,” and “Human Being;” both were performed over the course of the night.
Putting away Criminal Law readings with that strong sense of guilt I always get now when I choose to do anything non-school-related like eat or sleep (a feeling I’m sure isn’t going to go away anytime soon), I got my shit together and biked down to Kool Haus. Commuting up to York all the time means I hardly have a chance to ride my bike anymore, so it’s always nice, especially meandering through Toronto at night down a mostly quiet Queen’s Quay.
Some guy in a cape and sunglasses was opening, singing the blues alone with two mannequins and an old cassette player decorating the stage. I didn’t catch his name, but he wasn’t bad. At some point I retreated to the bar in the back to drink pineapple vodkas and iMessage my friend in 2L about mooting tips for the upcoming Lerner’s Cup. I guess it’s hard to leave school behind even when you try to. There was a long pause between sets, but then finally Cat Power came onto the stage.
You could already smell the pot burning in the air, coming from somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Security seemed nonplussed. She’d grown her hair out into a blonde mohawk since the album cover was taken, and she was wearing this leather jacket that completed the whole sleepy cowgirl thing she’s got going. She reminded me of Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry with that deep Southern warmth she carries in her notes, or this woman who I volunteered for all last year, whose subtle beauty humbled me the way Marshall’s stage presence did. For someone who’s mostly straight, and, you know, maybe it was the pineapple vodkas, but man, this woman was able to convey the sultriness of the whole Georgian summer in just a few bars. I kind of wanted to touch her face. If only for those pesky security guards.
Performing mostly from Sun, she did break from the new stuff to sing her cover of Pedro Infante’s “Angelitos Negros,” which was released on her covers album Jukebox (2008). This is a song tailored to the low octave of Cat Power’s voice, and the fact that it’s in Spanish doesn’t hurt either. Sometimes words always seem doubly more powerful when you don’t understand them and there’re rolls in the Rs. I felt like I was hearing her sing through a forgotten tunnel somewhere in Mexico. I definitely swayed a bit.
At one point, she took a break to chat to the crowd, her speaking voice quick-paced, a little whispery. She was telling a story about opening doors in her underwear and riding trains, and it was hard to make out, but it didn’t matter because I was already completely enamoured. She was lighting sticks of incense and candles around the foot of her mic stand, and the stage was surely her home. Before starting “Peace and Love,” she dedicated the song to that “G-damn election coming up in my cohn-try,” and gave a sarcastic wink. Yes, I’m totally with you Cat, fuck that whole theatrical shitshow! She starts throwing white roses out into the crowd. What a romantic. She made punk look pretty, in all the best senses of that word; free as a tumbleweed rolling across the parking lot of a near-empty saloon. This is the music you listen to when you’re having slow and lazy midday sex with someone you trust. She’s swinging the roses by their thorny stems at her hips before launching them out into the crowd, one by one. Then she started tearing up her set list and throwing the pieces out to eagerly awaiting hands.
Towards the end of the show, she complemented this guy in the crowd on his Charlie Chaplin t-shirt, and he literally took the shirt off his back and gave it to her. She tucked the shirt into the back of her jeans, and got the crowd to hand him a backstage pass, raising her eyebrows at him. The whole crowd felt a collective pang of envy as we cheered on this incredibly lucky, now shirtless guy.
Leaving the concert hall, a girl stumbled by in front of me with her boyfriend in tow, murmuring: “That was so good, I wanted to fuck her.” I guess I wasn’t the only one.