Cat Power

July plays badly, according to Cat Power. Better to laugh it off, flipping the title of the Roman festival, after an evening like the one on July 8th at the Auditorium, where literally everything happened. The fact is that the tantrums of the ineffable Chan over the poor sound quality ("it breaks my heart!") were the real protagonists of a hugely anticipated concert, which had drawn a fairly sizeable crowd to the Cavea for an "indie" event, despite some inevitable empty seats in the stands. But let's take it step by step.

Problem number one: you can't get in. The afternoon downpour pushed back the soundcheck. There's just enough time to go and check out the fine Carlo Massarini exhibition. Then, queuing for at least an hour, we while away the wait with small talk. "Why is this line so long?" a (gorgeous) young woman in front of me asks. "It rained," I reply. "It's raining?!" she says, eyes widening in confusion [homophone mix-up in Italian between 'piovuto' (rained) and 'bevuto' (drunk)]. "I'm afraid so, but let's hope not before the show," I close with a bad joke, then clear up the funny misunderstanding. "She says it's stopped now, though," she laughs. But sadly, once we're inside, that won't quite be the impression on stage.

Another snag: wet seats. Oh well, never mind, the seat is a good one, and next to me — by a welcome twist of fate — Ariel Bertoldo materializes, a talented OndaRock contributor, here reporting for L'Unità. And then there's the beard of Scott Matthew, which promises good things. The Australian minstrel takes the stage dramatically late, at 10pm, but doesn't skimp on a "guitar-and-voice" set that shows off all his talent: a run of covers drawn from his latest album, "Unlearned": from "To Love Somebody" to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody", right up to a surprising reinterpretation of Radiohead's "No Surprises" (Radiohead). Plus, one of his signature numbers, the hushed "In The End". Applause, but also anticipation: come on, Chan, come out!

And finally, just before 11pm, here we are. First the four musicians accompanying her emerge, then, out of the darkness, the diva's cropped, platinum hair comes into view. It's a bit painful to see her dressed this way, masking her beauty behind that grotesque look, squeezed into her regulation-issue leather jacket, but so it goes. What's more worrying, though, is that lurching gait, one leg dragged across the stage as if she'd just strained a quadricep. All for show? Maybe, since thankfully her movements are natural, as is her voice — always faint and husky, yet of an intensely profound depth. A voice that sends shivers down your spine as it fires its first arrow straight at the heart: "The Greatest", never mind that the sumptuous piano ballad gets twisted (and ruined) into a new rock version. The right vibrations are there, and so is the connection with the crowd. Chan smiles, greets Rome and utters her usual broken Italian. "I love you" is the most popular reply shouted back from the stands.

Beyond a rainforest-like humidity, there's a strange mood hanging in the air, suspended between pathos and precariousness. Clutching two microphones, Cat Power paces tirelessly around the stage, to the despair of the technicians who have to keep untangling her cables. The songs flow with real force, even the less transcendent ones from the latest "Sun", like the driving "Cherokee", almost a confession of her inner malaise ("I never knew pain, I never knew shame and now I know why"), or the offbeat mantra of "Nothin But Time" (for which none other than Iggy Pop lent his voice as backing vocals), accompanied by footage of two girls speeding on a motorbike through Albuquerque. But there are also dips into the past, like the bittersweet, Nyro-esque serenade of "King Rides By" (pulled from her 1996 debut "What Would The Community Think?") or the unsettling cover of Roberta Flack's "Angelitos Negros", already a bonus track on "Jukebox" (2008).

Chan lays bare all her fragility, confronts her demons, doesn't shy away from the emotion, but also lets all her unease show through: she's unsatisfied, glancing nervously at the sound engineers, giving a thumbs-down, arguing with the band. Then, exhausted, she snaps: "This sound breaks my heart, I can't sing." And again: "I'm here to cook you a proper meal, not serve you plain rice." With that, she flees, distraught, to her dressing room, leaving the band stunned on stage to improvise something. There's also talk of an outburst in front of an embarrassed almost-fellow actress, Violante Placido: "The sound isn't coming out as powerful as it should."

Dismay spreads across the faces of the audience, among whom you can spot both a quizzical-looking Nanni Moretti and an ever-beautiful Valeria Golino.

Some are outraged, some expected it, some sympathize with the unfortunate Cat, but no one will ever know whether this damned comeback show was truly as excruciating live as it sounds on record. The fact is, she comes back. If anything, even more detached and shaken than before. But she sings, somehow. This time, that sense of precariousness turns into the certainty of a slapdash performance, made up of a lot of improvisation and very little professionalism: that's how it went, yet another rough night for the stray cat of Atlanta, freshly dumped by yet another partner (actor Giovanni Ribisi) and still recovering from a string of health problems, including surgery for angioedema.

The audience members who stuck around, though, huddle close, standing in front of the stage. And there's something endearing about Chan as she starts throwing t-shirts and flowers into the crowd during "Ruin". She seems almost to be apologizing, mumbling confused words, gesturing. The funny thing is that the real technical problems start right about now: guitars feeding back, people fiddling about on stage, almost always to no avail. No one's thinking about the setlist anymore, which wraps up, chaotically, with that endless song dragged out all the way to 12:30 am, "out of spite towards those" — the Auditorium's management, always notoriously strict on this point — "who wanted to force her to finish by midnight", according to a mischievous Federico Guglielmi. Our hope, instead, is that Chan Marshall quickly completes her recovery from all her troubles, which in Rome, alas, seemed still very far from the finish line. Good luck, Cat.

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