The first time I saw Cat Power live, it was 12 or 13 years ago at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, and it was just excruciating. Over and over between songs, she apologized: “This is the most boring show ever, sorry everybody.” At one point, some joker yelled, “You need pyrotechnics!” (This was pre-Great White.) Marshall responded, “I need Technotronic.” The crowd tittered politely, the way indie rock crowds do, but her line didn’t make any sense at all. If the makers of the 1989 hip-house smash “Pump Up The Jam” had burst through the club doors, they wouldn’t have helped anything. If Chan Marshall had gotten her booty on the floor that night, she would not have made Ya Kid K’s day. But now, all these years later, Marshall’s made her own Technotronic album — or, that is, her own intensely personal version of one, which still sounds like a Cat Power album. And it’s fucking awesome.
