David Remnick: Over 20 years ago, in the summer of 2003, the musician Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, was on tour with an album called You Are Free. Staff writer Hilton Als went to see one of those shows, and he wrote a wonderful profile of Cat Power in The New Yorker. Along with it was a full-page portrait in black and white by the great photographer Richard Avedon. Avedon's photograph put her in the lineage of rock and roll icons going back to the old days.

Carrie Brownstein: In the portrait, Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, she's holding a cigarette which has a long ash dangling off the end of it. She has a lot of bracelets on. She's wearing a pair of low-rise jeans.

David Remnick: That's Carrie Brownstein, a member of the band Sleater-Kinney and a co-creator of the sketch show Portlandia. For the series we call Takes, Brownstein wrote in The New Yorker about that photograph that was taken right at the moment that Cat Power was going from indie darling to a wider musical phenomenon.

Carrie Brownstein: She has a smirk on her face, some smudged mascara or eyeliner, and she's holding up a Bob Dylan T-shirt. The shirt's neither on nor off her body. I like the cheekiness of it. There's something very canny about her holding this up. You're not sure whether the shirt is covering Cat Power or Cat Power is covering the shirt. Of course, Cat Power famously is a fan of Dylan. Her most recent album is Cat Power Sings Dylan at the 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.

[MUSIC - Cat Power Sings Dylan]

Carrie Brownstein: I'm trying to imagine what a 2003 New Yorker audience would think of this photo. There's all these juxtapositions, like it's Richard Avedon, like this is preeminent artist in his own right, capturing a photo of someone who maybe doesn't give a shit about being in The New Yorker. Like, you're not sure that she cares about being in The New Yorker, which I can't say is usually the vibe. Yes, she's not wearing underwear. There's a lot going on. To be honest, there are just a myriad of signifiers in this photo.

[music]

I think why I wanted to do this take on the Avedon portrait of Cat Power was that I was curious to revisit this time in music, this time in both in my own life as a fan and someone who was playing in a band at the same time as Cat Power. Cat Power is someone I do know personally, and she has opened for my band, Sleater-Kinney. We have played with her actually many times. Avedon talks about how he's like photographs. They don't reveal-- This is paraphrasing. They don't reveal truths, but they're accurate.

When I watch Cat Power, I feel like this is a non-conformist, in the truest sense, like this is someone who is perhaps asynchronous with what's going on now, or there's something that feels anachronistic about it. The difference between a non-conformist and we are in a time of such conformity, like the difference between a non-conformist and someone who is reactionary or someone who is contrarian, is that-- First of all, it's a less obvious choice, but also it's just who they are.

I think that also creates a dissonance with the listener or the viewer. I think there's an earnestness. I think there is a strong desire to connect. That is something that Sleater-Kinney, I think, shares with Cat Power. That it's just trying to make sense of a world of phenomena of our own purpose. It's this existential journey that we don't really want to do alone. Music is a conduit and a means to not do that by oneself.

[MUSIC - Cat Power: I Don't Blame You]

Carrie Brownstein: That is, "I Don't Blame You" off Cat Power's 2003 album, You Are Free. I think a lot of people at the time assumed, and Cat Power confirmed that she was singing at least partly about Kurt Cobain. I really think in some ways that's beside the point. There's something about the song that's so prayerful and redemptive. When I hear her singing  "I Don't Blame You," and then she is basically also singing the backup vocals, too. It's like the second the backup vocals are singing to her, like she's singing to Kurt or to some troubled artists. Then the backup vocals are singing to herself as the artist who's suffering.

[MUSIC - Cat Power: I Don't Blame You]

Carrie Brownstein: I think for me, I felt that your band or your music became part of someone's identity. I think that is the greatest privilege and also really, really frightening, I think, especially if-- I didn't yet feel like I had the ballast, I guess, I was barely carrying myself along. I think I could sense that Cat Power was, I think, also overwhelmed by the ways that audiences were claiming her music. It's like everything you wanted, and then you're afraid that it's maybe not enough. I think that pressure is hard. At the time, you don't really see it as pressure. You just see it as this really intense ride that you've put yourself on.

[MUSIC - Cat Power: I Don't Blame You]

Carrie Brownstein: The Avedon portrait accompanied a Hilton Als piece in which there was this line. Marshall was alternately shy and demanding, a solipsist.

Male Speaker: A solipsist, that is to say, a star. Her triumphs were as engaging as her disasters.

Carrie Brownstein: When you read reviews of this era of Cat Power in 2003, people were frustrated because they found comfort in her songs. At her shows, they felt uncomfortable.

Male Speaker: The set lasted approximately an hour and 10 minutes, during which time she talked to her friend's baby from the stage, asked no one in particular if the photographer, Mark Borthwick, was in the house, talked about her friends who had brought the baby, directed a fair amount of bemused antagonism toward a particularly ardent fan, asked someone offstage how many minutes were left in the set, played with her hair, took her large sunglasses on and off, indulged in rambling confessions, and complained about the length of one tune from her current album, You Are Free, before singing an abbreviated version of it.

Carrie Brownstein: It's like they wanted the fragility but not the mess, and they wanted this brokenness without the shards. It was like, what are we asking her to clean up? Like, why are we making her do chores? I think my point is, when I looked back on this photo, it just really reminded me how lucky we are that Cat Power still makes music. Avedon has a way of reminding us to keep remembering, I guess, to keep going back to that place that feels sacred and special and uncynical.

[music]

David Remnick: The musician Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney. She wrote about Richard Avedon's portrait of Cat Power in our series called Takes.

Carrie Brownstein: Is she arriving home or going out, dressing or undressing? The Bob Dylan shirt is neither on nor off her body. She's not covering Dylan, he's covering her. Displaying, discarding. Stop. It's only a shirt. The unbuttoned jeans are going down, coming up. The pubic hair is staying either way. Take in her morning after smoky eye, that half smile. Try squeezing between Cat Power and Avedon's lens. The space is slippery, inaccessible. You're not sure you were even invited. In the end, you're the one who feels unknown, as temporary as the ash on Marshall's cigarette. Everything else is Cat Power.

[music]

David Remnick: You can find Carrie Brownstein's piece and a whole selection of essays about The New Yorker's archive at newyorker.com/takes. Here's Zadie Smith writing about Grace Paley, Ina Garten on Julia Child, and much more. You can also subscribe to the magazine as well at newyorker.com.

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