Festival review: Cat Power Sings Dylan
The acclaimed Cat Power takes on an unparalleled collection of Bob Dylan’s early songbook, and despite many musical highlights, this disconcerting performance left both singer and audience frequently on edge.
If you want to hear Bob Dylan at his best, there couldn’t be a better setlist than his Royal Albert Hall concert in 1966. Never mind that it was actually recorded in Manchester, it became the Faberge egg of bootleg vinyl back in the days before Napster changed everything. And it contained the infamous moment in the electric set when a disgruntled folk music fan yelled out “Judas.”
Dylan’s program was divided into two sections, beginning with an acoustic segment with just His Bobness plus guitar and harmonica. The second featured the soon to be legendary musicians known as The Band (on this Manchester night, minus Levon Helm). The songs, with just three exceptions, are from Dylan’s most innovative albums of the middle 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.
It was an inspired idea for Cat Power aka Chan Marshall to record the bootleg material in its entirety. Her powerful, expressive voice is a match for the lyric density and singular phrasing of his compositions. Releasing the album in November 2023, she has toured the show intermittently since.
Appearing onstage under sprays of spotlights, Marshall motions to dim them as low as possible. Accompanied on acoustic guitar and harmonica, she opens with ‘She Belongs to Me’ followed by ‘Fourth Time Round’. Both are sung slowly and reflectively, with guitarist Henry Munson watching her closely, coaxing her to stay in sync.
During the Dylan masterpiece ‘Visions of Johanna’ (“Ain’t it just like the night / to play tricks when you trying to be so quiet”) Marshall bends the phrasing and becomes distracted, telling the crowd, “I don’t know which song hurts me the most.” Marshall has endured both physical and mental health challenges over a number of years, including a catastrophic loss of vocal strength which threatened her career. But this seems to be a different kind of pain.
Over the rest of the set the tempo becomes more weary and anxious. ‘Desolation Row’, already arduously dirge-like in Dylan’s version, is further diminished. ‘Just like a Woman’ is problematic, and ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, a song she clearly cherishes, has Munson manoeuvring to keep in rhythm while Marshall keeps referring to her music stand to keep track of the lyrics — as she does throughout most of the performance.
It is a disconcerting set, though not without many lovely moments. The accompanists are excellent, the harmonica playing faithful to Dylan’s breathy ‘hands-free’ technique. The audience is eager to applaud and encourage — tempered with concern for the singer’s welfare.
The larger six-piece band assembles for the electric set that is famous for being infamous — despite the fact that Dylan had already traded in his folksinger incarnation eighteen months earlier. And, propelled by psychedelics and amphetamine, he created songs the like of which had never been heard before.
‘Tell Me Momma’ is first and the sound is colossal. It lifts the event and Chan Marshall also. She sways to the rhythm as gun guitarist Munson switches on the voltage, Jordan Summers plays cavernous chords on the Hammond B3, matched by Christopher Joyner on piano and a lock-step rhythm section. As Dylan did in 1966, they play his early folk blues songs with the full apparatus of rock and roll: ‘I Don’t Believe You’, ‘Baby Let Me Follow You Down’, and ‘One Too Many Mornings’.
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Chan Marshall finds her Cat Power again with a driving rendition of ‘Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat’ and — an absolute highlight — ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’. Dylan’s sneeringly contemptuous portrait of a suburban conformist now becomes a raucous blues rescue mission for the beleaguered Mr Jones.
Marshall then takes the mic to greet and thank an audience still signalling support and appreciation. And things unravel even more. She digresses and rambles, moving between regret and optimistic promises. At times it’s distressing to watch, as the band looks on, unable to turn things around.
It is only when she announces the closer – ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ — that both band and singer can conclude as magnificently as they deserve. Marshall’s singing regains strength and her tribute to the one of the most innovative and original songwriters of the 20th century can be seen for the achievement it is.
Cat Power performed at Her Majesty’s Theatre on Monday March 10 as part of Adelaide Festival
Read more 2025 Adelaide Festival coverage here on InReview