By Cory Brown

DESPITE POPULAR BELIEF , life is not faster in modern society. We just accumulate faster. With so much content needed to justify every cent of profit potential, the information revolution has reached the point where linear information is not enough. The computing notion of hypertext, layers, and tangents and digital piles of information has created disturbing parallels in real life. The music critic is the victim of such piles, only these piles take the form of tiny geysers of compact discs shooting up from open surfaces, stacks of publicity photos and press packets, discarded padded envelopes in bloated yellow piles of uselessness. The postmodern critic (heh) lives and works among these piles, and his/her criticism is designed and sorted in piles too (and I don't mean that exclusively in the derogatory), looking for layer after layer of meaning in the piles of lyrics in the piles of songs in the piles of albums, ad infinitum. It's not a picture intended to elicit any sympathy or understanding, and I feel cheeky for even suggesting it as a microcosm of contemporary life (yet another pile of theoretical silliness), but I can't help feeling that things wouldn't be quite so complex if we only stopped piling.

The story of Cat Power is not a tale of piles. It is a story that starts at a somewhere (the notorious Clermont Lounge, Atlanta, Ga., in 1991) and travels from place to place (including the Bottom of the Hill here in San Francisco this Thursday). It's a story that is in no small part made up of a voice and a woman both named Chan Marshall. After three and a half albums of songs she made up, Chan decided to sing some other people's songs for The Covers Album (Matador). A lot of people have piled things onto this woman, from ten-cent psychoanalysis to flashy cultural theory to brutal critique, all of which can be found in one of those aforementioned press packets. A colorful read, but not quite the story. The story of Cat Power is a tale of transient beauty, of clean sheets, of both love and disdain for the familiar, and of a voice so naked and pure, it makes the world in which it's heard seem gaudy and preposterous by comparison. It is a voice that nobody really knows how to discuss, including me. So when I spoke with Chan, we talked around it.

The songs on The Covers Album, from the popular ("[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction," "Sea of Love") to the obscure (Michael Hurley's "Swee Dee Dee," Moby Grape's "Naked If I Want To"), bear little resemblance to the original versions, but Marshall recoils at the oft-used tag of "irreverence."

"Oh, that's not true at all. That's a horrible thing to say. I think that within the tradition of song, people didn't have a formula, everybody's perceptions are different. Just because I'm not doing it the way Jagger would do it doesn't mean that it's irreverent. My perceptions and the way that I am as a person make it different than the way that he would necessarily do it.

"A lot of people greet [the new album] with a sense of humor; they think it's funny – [Drolly] 'Oh, isn't this humorous. You didn't put the word satisfaction in the song.' Or they'll say, 'Oh my god! What are you doing?' They're nice, but they seem caught off guard, like it needs to be explained. It's not taken for what it is, it needs explanation, which is kind of strange. I just thought, 'Oh yeah, I want to put these songs out because I really like these songs.' But then, people intellectualize something that doesn't need to be.

"When I'm singing onstage, I'm trying to sing as best I can because I respect the song and what the song means to me. I'm not thinking about the original singer and the way they sing the song.

"I didn't sit down and make a list of covers and say, 'OK, I've got to sing them.' They all came at different times. One day I got a piano and I sat down and started playing and I thought, 'Oh this is great,' and the first notes I started playing were 'I Found a Reason,' the 'Do you believe?' thing, and that just became that song for me. Onstage, people would be talking and I couldn't concentrate and I didn't want to rock out anymore, so I just started noodling, just playing these same little notes and singing 'Kingsport Town' and that just became the way that I sang it."

Marshall's versions of "Satisfaction" and "I Found a Reason" strip the songs of their familiar choruses and repeated refrains. In a live setting, she's made similar changes to her own songs, such as "Rockets." Is this just the result of touring and playing things night after night?

"Absolutely. But I've always had a sickness, I've never liked that. It's weird. Repetition of music is the only way I can concentrate on singing, but repetition of lyrics to me is just ... absurd."

I bring up the fact that I've seen Cat Power live a number of times, to which Chan replies, "Uh oh." The Cat Power live experience is as unpredictable as they come. On the right night, you'll find a religiously quiet audience bearing witness to a singer of enormous ability for well over an hour, perhaps closer to two. On an off night, Marshall might leave the stage after six or so songs, mumbling little more than a vague apology.

"It's not because I'm a perfectionist. I know what I can do, and if I'm not doing that, it kills me. I feel such a huge responsibility to people who are paying money, and, as hard as I'm trying, if I can't overcome it, if I can't be better, that makes me feel awful about a live show."

The last time I saw Cat Power at Bottom of the Hill, Chan's last comment to the audience (after a full set) was that it should have been better. I wonder what goes through her head after a show like that.

"Just all the terrible things – I can't do anything right. I just take it so hard, that I've let people down. Sometimes that happens, but it's all in my own mind and I just can't even look at them. I'm just afraid that when I look at them ... it's bad."

That being said, she knows when it's good, too. "When I can concentrate."

I want to know about the voice. I ask Chan if she ever listens to her own records.

"No-o-ho-ho. No way!"

She must hear herself during mixing though.

"Well, sometimes I think, 'That'll work, that's good enough.' I never think it's magic or anything."

I could tell her otherwise until I'm blue in the face, but I already know she won't hear any of it. But I have to wonder, what keeps her going?

"It's just so familiar to me now. I know this is where I'm at and what I'm doing and I've accepted that. I do it out of habit."

Cat Power plays with Martin Holcombe Thurs/4, 8 and 10:45 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $12. (415) 621-4455.

PHOTO: RAVHAV SEGEV

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