My favourite album: Moon Pix by Cat Power
Our writers are picking their favourite albums. Here, Sean Michaels recalls stumbling over a melancholy masterpiece in the depths of the Canadian winter
'Such beautiful, strange music' … Moon Pix by Cat Power
In 2001, I was 19 and melancholy. It was winter in Montreal, my first year away from home, my first year of college. I wasn't unhappy, just melancholy. I was feeling grown-up, free, but also anchorless, unmoored. Very keenly, I remember, I felt the veil between childhood and everything that comes after.
Outside my window, icicles grew longer. Steam billowed across the sky. Streetlights shone. At my computer, I was using Napster, Audiogalaxy and Hotline to discover all kinds of exciting new music.
Which brings us, almost, to Cat Power.
In 2001, I was not yet a music nerd. Unlike my friends, I had not grown up with my big sister's Clash albums, with all-ages nights at the hardcore clubs. My parents had introduced me to Dick Gaughan, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, a deep love of classical music. My teenage roamings had brought me to Belle and Sebastian, Gomez, Stan Getz, but not much further. Gigs were for those older than 19. CDs cost $16.99. And then there was a technological revolution that changed everything, exactly as the music industry feared.
I had a T3 internet line, and I was geek enough to use the software. The vault I had uncovered seemed to go on forever. I sought out every name I could think of, every name in the weekly paper, even the names Amazon recommended at the bottom of its pages: if you like Rain Dogs, you might like this… I was voracious, swooning, in love with Astral Weeks, Operation: Doomsday, Ágætis Byrjun, A Love Supreme.
And then I found something that was probably called 01-AMERICAN FLAG-Cat Power-MOO~1.mp3. Moon Pix came out in 1998; I did not hear it then. I had not seen the strange, sexy video for Cross Bones Style, in which Chan Marshall dances casually, so bewitchingly casually, with flashes of yellow nail polish.
Instead I heard Moon Pix's first track, American Flag, on headphones plugged into an iMac. It wasn't the opening note that grabbed me, the yawning electric guitar; it was the thump and shuffle of beat. And then Marshall's fond, searching voice. And finally Jim White's drums, an unexpected entrance, Moon Pix's extraordinary secret weapon. For three and a half minutes, the guitar yawns, the beat slurs, Marshall sings and searches. The song is full of gorgeous harmonies but they come at slants. White's snare and bass-drum are like the reflections of things, facets on a diamond.
It is such beautiful, strange music. And as the album unfolded, it revealed many more colours. The song Say, like an inverted blues. You May Know Him, with hard brown strums. He Turns Down, all green and rose, with flute that seems borrowed from Van Morrison's Beside You.
Metal Heart is Moon Pix's best song, a track that seems confused and in the process of becoming less confused. There is smoke, gold, lost snare, cymbal; Marshall's voice, like a drowsy searchlight. First a fragment of Amazing Grace, then a campfire chorus, loose at the seams. "Now I see you," she sings. Metal Heart's ending – clumsy, sudden, one of the most perfect things I have ever heard.
That winter, I bought the album. I put it in my Sony Discman. I took it outside, along the icy streets. With Moon Pix in my pocket I would walk forever, through the night, traipsing up University Avenue and across the mountain, into the desolate pre-dawn downtown. I remember listening to Cross Bones Style and hearing the creak of snow underfoot. I remember the cold, the weary Christmas lights, abandoned streets. My heart kept breaking, I wasn't sure why. I would put Colors and the Kids on repeat – literally on repeat, pushing the buttons on my CD player – and dwell in the slopes of those piano chords. Such a sad song.
Years passed.
This winter I will be 30. I am not melancholy. Chan Marshall, who was not well in the years after Moon Pix, is happier now. She smiles and appears in movies. The last few Cat Power albums are different to Moon Pix. I do not enjoy them. Marshall even re-recorded Metal Heart, turning it something cool, glossy, obvious. But I do not begrudge this happiness. How could I begrudge it? A decade has passed.
Moon Pix is my favourite album because it meant a lot to me when I was 19 and melancholy, and everything seemed important, and I could feel the steam billowing across my sky. But it is also my favourite album because it has remained my favourite album. Because these songs are coals. Like coals, they seem somehow unreal – wavering, spectral. In the braid of guitars, the weave of Marshall's doubled voice, it is never too pretty, never too safe. Eleven tracks, gorgeous and fucked. Thunder rolls again. And Marshall asks her questions, almost.
Outside my window, icicles grew longer. Steam billowed across the sky. Streetlights shone. At my computer, I was using Napster, Audiogalaxy and Hotline to discover all kinds of exciting new music.
Which brings us, almost, to Cat Power.
In 2001, I was not yet a music nerd. Unlike my friends, I had not grown up with my big sister's Clash albums, with all-ages nights at the hardcore clubs. My parents had introduced me to Dick Gaughan, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, a deep love of classical music. My teenage roamings had brought me to Belle and Sebastian, Gomez, Stan Getz, but not much further. Gigs were for those older than 19. CDs cost $16.99. And then there was a technological revolution that changed everything, exactly as the music industry feared.
I had a T3 internet line, and I was geek enough to use the software. The vault I had uncovered seemed to go on forever. I sought out every name I could think of, every name in the weekly paper, even the names Amazon recommended at the bottom of its pages: if you like Rain Dogs, you might like this… I was voracious, swooning, in love with Astral Weeks, Operation: Doomsday, Ágætis Byrjun, A Love Supreme.
And then I found something that was probably called 01-AMERICAN FLAG-Cat Power-MOO~1.mp3. Moon Pix came out in 1998; I did not hear it then. I had not seen the strange, sexy video for Cross Bones Style, in which Chan Marshall dances casually, so bewitchingly casually, with flashes of yellow nail polish.
Instead I heard Moon Pix's first track, American Flag, on headphones plugged into an iMac. It wasn't the opening note that grabbed me, the yawning electric guitar; it was the thump and shuffle of beat. And then Marshall's fond, searching voice. And finally Jim White's drums, an unexpected entrance, Moon Pix's extraordinary secret weapon. For three and a half minutes, the guitar yawns, the beat slurs, Marshall sings and searches. The song is full of gorgeous harmonies but they come at slants. White's snare and bass-drum are like the reflections of things, facets on a diamond.
It is such beautiful, strange music. And as the album unfolded, it revealed many more colours. The song Say, like an inverted blues. You May Know Him, with hard brown strums. He Turns Down, all green and rose, with flute that seems borrowed from Van Morrison's Beside You.
Metal Heart is Moon Pix's best song, a track that seems confused and in the process of becoming less confused. There is smoke, gold, lost snare, cymbal; Marshall's voice, like a drowsy searchlight. First a fragment of Amazing Grace, then a campfire chorus, loose at the seams. "Now I see you," she sings. Metal Heart's ending – clumsy, sudden, one of the most perfect things I have ever heard.
That winter, I bought the album. I put it in my Sony Discman. I took it outside, along the icy streets. With Moon Pix in my pocket I would walk forever, through the night, traipsing up University Avenue and across the mountain, into the desolate pre-dawn downtown. I remember listening to Cross Bones Style and hearing the creak of snow underfoot. I remember the cold, the weary Christmas lights, abandoned streets. My heart kept breaking, I wasn't sure why. I would put Colors and the Kids on repeat – literally on repeat, pushing the buttons on my CD player – and dwell in the slopes of those piano chords. Such a sad song.
Years passed.
This winter I will be 30. I am not melancholy. Chan Marshall, who was not well in the years after Moon Pix, is happier now. She smiles and appears in movies. The last few Cat Power albums are different to Moon Pix. I do not enjoy them. Marshall even re-recorded Metal Heart, turning it something cool, glossy, obvious. But I do not begrudge this happiness. How could I begrudge it? A decade has passed.
Moon Pix is my favourite album because it meant a lot to me when I was 19 and melancholy, and everything seemed important, and I could feel the steam billowing across my sky. But it is also my favourite album because it has remained my favourite album. Because these songs are coals. Like coals, they seem somehow unreal – wavering, spectral. In the braid of guitars, the weave of Marshall's doubled voice, it is never too pretty, never too safe. Eleven tracks, gorgeous and fucked. Thunder rolls again. And Marshall asks her questions, almost.
No comments:
Post a Comment