Review: Cat Power at Aloha Tower

Photos by Gary Chun / gchun@staradvertiser.com

By Gary Chun / gchun@staradvertiser.com

“This is never easy.”

It was an admission vocalist Cat Power made about halfway through her set Wednesday night at the Waterfront at Aloha Tower Marketplace. Her regular tour engineer was not manning the offstage stage monitor board because his mother had taken ill and left the tour. Throughout her consistently engaging — and at times enthralling — concert, she had lengthy offstage conversations with the local replacement, who seemed at a loss for words as to what she was looking for in a usually carefully nuanced sound mix he had no prior knowledge of.

Still, she and her remarkable backup band carried on, taking an audience numbering around 500 to a rare, spiritual place filled with Cat Power’s vocal flights that were still grounded by a sympathetic quartet of musicians. The woman has such an arresting, idiosyncratic way of singing that it was truly amazing she could sustain a relatively quiet if intense mood for over a two-hour period.

You knew things would be different about this concert when she opened with her lonely and haunted rendition of “House of the Rising Sun” that surprisingly segued to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” that couldn’t be different from the original. With this song, as with others in her set, she finds a well of emotion so deep in the songs that it transforms them into something uniquely her own. You’ll never listen to them the same way again.

Dressed all in black with white shoes, Cat Power restlessly roamed the stage as she sang, seemingly in search of the right note, the right phrasing, the right vocal gesture, the right space to occupy, to get everything out of her songs. Her cover of Jackson Browne’s (by way of Nico) “These Days” was absolutely exquisite. Two songs from her most popular album, “The Greatest,” “Willie” and the title track were well-received by the attentive audience. Sometimes her singing exhibited a gospel-like power, like on “Plans for the Future” and “Lord, Help the Poor & Needy.”

Watching her at relatively close range, I’ve never been so captivated by a singer’s performance. It was so naked and revealing, but she stayed in control throughout. And she proved to be generous in spirit as well: after a standing ovation, she stayed on stage to toss to her remaining fans copies of her setlist, even signing them when asked.

Another person who was ecstatic by Cat Power’s presence was Sabrina Velazquez, who was chosen to open for her favorite singer. With her own backing band of Mike Pooley, Zach Shimizu, Toni Wong and Eli Oguma, Velazquez overcame her own set of nerves to put on a solid set, ending with a celebratory “The Sea,” complete with Shimizu on ukulele. (Velazquez was lucky to meet Cat Power personally before and after the concert, and you can read her thoughts and reactions in her next blog installment of “Scene + Heard,” exclusive to Honolulu Pulse.)