The cover-savvy artist pays tribute to Dylan’s crossroads live.
At the end of 2022, Cat Power took the stage at the Royal Albert Hall to perform Bob Dylan’s legendary live concert from 1966 (which actually took place in the Manchester Free Trade Hall and was only attributed to the now titular London location due to incorrect bootleg labels) song by song to reproduce.
The artist, who was born in 1972 as Charlyn Marie Marshall, succeeds in the first, acoustically arranged half of the concert with flying colors: sung gracefully and with accents, she lets Dylan’s powerful words and images fill the screen in her head, wrestles a new level of meaning from “Just Like A Woman” or shines with it their interpretation of “Visions Of Johanna” and “Desolation Row”.
The second, electrified band set, which at the time was a source of offense for all folkies who wanted to take Dylan as their own forever, naturally does not achieve the same level of verve and emphasis that Dylan had in conjunction with his later team as The Band, despite having great fellow musicians the team that achieved fame. Nevertheless, she creates the performances from awe to moving; Attention to detail such as the audience’s reproduction of the iconic “Judas!” shout together with Power’s casual “Jesus” replica provides a nice comic relief.