photo credit: Mario Sorrenti

Chan Marshall keeps losing track of the question. After a few poetic sentences, she’ll pause and say, “I forget what you asked me.” But, like with Marshall’s music, the original question doesn’t matter; it’s her eventual interpretation that’s far more interesting. The musician’s latest as Cat Power, Covers, is her third jukebox collection—and it’s clear that Marshall is as compelled by exploring the songwriting of others as she is by doing it herself. Although both the press and her fans have consistently made a big deal about her decision to devote entire albums to other artists’ material, Marshall elected to record her favorite songs simply because she enjoys it.

“When I’m doing a cover, it’s because I love the song so much and there’s something about singing it,” Marshall reflects, while speaking over Zoom from her home in Florida (audio only, as she hates having to look at herself ). “Like ‘These Arms of Mine,’ it doesn’t matter how old I’ll be or where I’ll be or who I’ll be with or if I’m alone. When I think of that song, it’s not that I want to evoke that emotion—I just feel that emotion instantly and I want to sing. It’s like time stops and there’s this injection of boundless hopefulness and some dimension of freedom.”

She pauses, before adding: “I don’t know how to describe it.”

On Covers, which Marshall recorded over two weeks at Mant Sounds Studio in December of 2019, she came up with an eclectic selection of tunes, from Lana Del Rey’s “White Mustang” to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “I Had a Dream, Joe.” Marshall and her band had previously played some of the songs live, like Frank Ocean’s “Bad Religion” and Jackson Browne’s “These Days.” Others came on instinct once Marshall entered the studio. Concerned that her musicians needed to relax, she asked them to play Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind.” It sounded so good that Marshall hopped into the vocal booth and recorded it.

“I just wanted to make the band feel good,” she recalls. “I wasn’t expecting it to sound good enough for the record—I was just trying to loosen them up.”

She immediately followed “Against the Wind” with improvised takes on “I Had a Dream, Joe” (which is not a song Marshall says she would typically go for) and Iggy Pop’s “Endless Sea.” Nothing was planned—Marshall just wanted to see how the songs felt. She admits that she enjoys that loose approach, both in the studio and onstage. Some of her most cherished cuts even originally grew out of times when she was just “playing around,” especially during her live shows.

“That’s sort of what I’ve been doing since Moon Pix, maybe,” Marshall explains, referencing her 1998 album. “And it’s not all the time—it’s usually one or two songs, you know? But live, I’ll just start playing a cover or tell my band, without the audience hearing, ‘Hey, can you play this song?’ I’ll tell them one song and then I’ll start singing another song over that song. Sometimes I won’t even tell them what I’m going to sing. I think that’s part of being an untrained artist. I don’t know chords and stuff, so I think that’s part of it. Some painters never went to art school; some dancers didn’t go to school. That’s part of the creative spirit—the nature of the beast.”

She adds, clearly thinking aloud, “If what I do is make up music—and make up melodies and words—then it makes sense that I would also do that live. I think it’s common in improvisational jazz, but I don’t think it’s normal in [rock]. I like jamming, you know? You just start jamming.”

The Frank Ocean cover, a blusey take on a track off his 2012 album Channel Orange, was birthed from a similar moment of improvisation. During a tour in support of The Wanderer, her most recent album of original music, Marshall found herself more and more unwilling to perform one of that album’s key tracks, “In Your Face.” She needed a respite from the song, which was written during Donald Trump’s presidency.

“That was about how I felt about all those people—not necessarily Trump, but that kind of person who extorts and dehumanizes humanity and greed,” Marshall recounts of the track. “Fucking sociopathic leaders of the world. People of power, you know? So I was on tour and I kept getting more and more pissed off when I would sing ‘In Your Face.’ I sang it very slowly, very specifically and enunciated. Eventually, I just started singing the lyrics to ‘Bad Religion’ instead. Since then I’ve never played ‘In Your Face’ again.”

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As fans of Cat Power know, Marshall almost never does a straight cover. Her arrangements, her vocal melodies and the general tone of the song always differ from the original. On her previous covers albums, 2000’s The Covers Record and 2008’s Jukebox, Marshall offered her own versions of songs like The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Hank Williams’ “Ramblin’ (Wo)man,” which are almost unidentifiable in parts. While many listeners appreciate a fresh take on an old classic, Marshall sounds a bit defensive when asked about some of the reactions she has received.

“With a song like ‘Satisfaction,’ people say, ‘But it doesn’t sound like the original,’” she says. “Well, that’s because I don’t fucking know how to play the fucking guitar. I know how to play how I know how to play, but I don’t know chords or whatnot. And I know that sounds ignorant and lame coming from an academic jazz perspective or music theory perspective or whatever, but it doesn’t bother me that I play the way I play. It’s not that I’m deconstructing the cover—I just don’t know how to do a straight cover. And if I did know how to do the straight cover, I think it would bore the shit out of me, honestly.”

She stops herself, noting that she forgot the question, which was: “Are you trying to evoke the feeling of the original song in a cover?” But, Marshall eventually finds her footing and explains, “If I’m going to play the song, there’s something about finding my way through this maze of how I feel and how that song makes me feel. I close my eyes and I find the notes, and I just start singing and finding my way through it. The feeling appears. If somebody taught me how to play the notes straight, I’m not sure the feelings would appear because it would be laid out for me and I would think of the original too much. It would be too available.”

Covers primarily showcases Marshall’s takes on compositions by other artists, but it also finds her covering herself—with notable revision. Marshall originally included the memorable, evocative “Hate” on Cat Power’s 2006 breakout album, The Greatest. It’s a song about suicide, with Marshall crooning, “Hey come here/ Let me whisper in your ear/ I hate myself and I want to die.” At the time, when Marshall came up with the song on the fly in the studio, the sentiment felt right. Now, not so much. For Covers, Marshall rewrote the song as “Unhate,” an equally evocative tune that reflects back on the original. Ultimately, the lyrics assert: “So glad we make it out alive.”

“I changed the lyrics when I was in South Africa again, after not going back there for 20 years,” Marshall explains. “That song is about suicide and I thought, ‘Damn, shit has changed. I’m 20 years older; I’m not singing about killing myself.’”

This interview, in fact, takes place three days before Marshall’s 50th birthday. She’s oddly excited for the occasion, which she plans to spend with her close friends. Because her tour in support of Covers has been delayed several months due to the pandemic, she’s found the time to organize a proper celebration (with lots of testing, of course). Marshall is aware of the ongoing perception of her as sad, or even crazy. She knows people have referred to her songs as “music to slash your wrists to.” But that’s not how she sees herself, especially these days.

“I’ve always felt that, because I’m the teller of the tale, it’s coming from my perspective,” she says. “Whether it’s a cover or not, I always feel what I’m delivering is, in a way, triumphant. There’s a kind of empathy. I don’t feel like it’s sad. But that’s my perspective.”

When asked what has changed, she adds: “The difference is the person I am now. I feel like I’ve triumphed over some sort of hump that only I could get myself through, which is understanding how to not be so hard on myself—to enjoy the fucking moment, even when shit gets really hard.”

Arriving in this more grounded state of being has been a long journey for Marshall. She credits therapy, as well as her friends, for her ability to get over her social anxiety. Marshall admits that she had to remove fear from her thought process in order to become more present in her life. She quit drinking and focused on what was in right front of her, including her son, Boaz. Because of that work, the singer now finds herself cultivating true mindfulness when she performs.

“I am very present in my life nowadays and, when I play and sing, I feel like I’m in connection with this unknown thing,” she says. “I feel like the window opens or the door opens and there’s this other dimension that’s just laying there—a veil gets lifted. I don’t know if it’s spiritual or if it’s some sort of ancient human living thing, like whales or wolves. I’m not sure what it is, but I feel content. Time is going forward and backward—it’s opened up. It could just be a release of endorphins. It could be as simple as that. Maybe I’m just replenishing some much-needed serotonin or endorphins when I sing, I don’t know. Before, it was very different. When I was younger, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t know that was the place I was trying to conjure. I just knew I was in a place, but I didn’t know how to find freedom within it.”

For the most part, Marshall’s career has been on pause for the past two years. She initially intended to release Covers in the summer of 2020. That March, right before the world locked down, Marshall was in Los Angeles recording a take on “I Think of Angels” for the Sean Penn-directed film Flag Day. She had already taken the press photos for her album, but as things began to become uncertain, Marshall canceled everything on her schedule and flew home to Boaz.

“It just got frozen in a block of ice until a few days ago,” she says of the album, which finally arrived in January. “[I was] like, ‘Fine, it’s in a block of ice. Everything is frozen.’ I was able to focus on my son. He turned 5 and then 6 [over the pandemic]. I taught him to read and do math and write. I was able to keep the television off because of Trump, and then Black Lives Matter started and I was trying to educate and be present with my son and my dogs. I watched the world from the windows.”

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Even as the world has struggled, grappling with a global pandemic and the ups and downs of politics, Marshall sees music as the great uniter. The album’s cover art—which boasts a denim shirt with a pencil and a passport in the pocket— represents people around the world, working hard. This collection of songs is an offering to those people.

“Music is like our second skin,” Marshall says. “It’s like our second self. People always say, ‘Blah blah blah is the soundtrack to our lives.’ And five million people right now today could listen to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ and all feel this sense of connection. They’ve been listening to this song for-fucking-ever. They can all feel at one time that intense powerful feeling—and God knows where it comes from—and they can all be connected just by one song. To me, that’s super powerful—how songs can be so relative to human beings. It doesn’t matter where you come from, music and songs are such a huge part of who we are. It makes us who we are, in a strange way.”

And while Marshall’s next album will be a set of originals—“I already know what I’m going to do,” the singer hints—she still sees the beauty in delivering a choice cover.

“I’m never going to stop doing other people’s songs because I feel like it’s a necessity for my life, for me, to enjoy what I do,” Marshall says. “This isn’t the final covers record. I’ll always do songs by those living and those who’ve passed—who are the greats, who I love. They’re songs that are a part of me. They’re songs that are mine because I’ve been singing them since I was a little kid, some of them. I feel like songs are ours once we’ve heard them a billion times.”