Waking Ear

Cat Power/"He War" -- Chan Marshall's return to the album format seems to be causing quite a stir. What are my two cents, you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

I love Cat Power. I think she combines the jaded art-school-girlness of Nico or Stevie Nicks with the rawness of a singer-songwriter like Joni Mitchell. I don't consider that to be a bad thing, but I guess some people don't like it. I think they were dumped after very raw relationships with art-school girls.

Seriously, I think Matos' rant on Cat Power, linked above, is a tad misogynist. Which I'm sure wasn't intentional, and I wouldn't accuse anybody of being a woman-hater unless they really deserved it, and I'm not doing that here. But critics tend to dismiss very personal lyrics or very different approaches to rock, when they're done by women, as gimmicky. Just ask, um, Nico, Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell. The talents of the first two were attributed to their male bandmates for years, and the last one was largely diagnosed as the musical equivalent of a chick flick for much of her career.

Matos: "She needs to get out of the house more often." "Marshall's stubborn refusal to cultivate a mood other than petulant crabbiness." "The Covers Record amounts to a declaration of Chan Marshall's superiority to everything she touches." Yeah, she's just a bitch, isn't she?

It's one thing to not like her music, but Matos doesn't like her. And that doesn't happen much when critics review male musicians, except for Conor Oberst, who, in the estimation of many, is a little girly-boy.

Oh, yeah, "He War." It's a good song. You should download it.