Cat Power - Cat Power sings Dylan and More 2025

In the organizer's words:

Last November, Cat Power took to the stage of London's Royal Albert Hall to perform a song-for-song recreation of one of the most legendary and transformative live concerts of all time.

The concert took place at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in May 1966 and was long known as the "Royal Albert Hall Concert" due to a mislabeled bootleg. In the original performance, Bob Dylan switched from acoustic to electric in the middle of the show, incurring the wrath of folk purists and changing the course of rock'n'roll forever.

In her own interpretation of this historic evening, the artist also known as Chan Marshall embodied each song with equal parts conviction and grace and a palpable sense of comfort, ultimately conveying the anarchic tension of Dylan's performance with a warm and radiant joy. The live album "Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert" features Marshall's captivating performance, which both lovingly honors the historical influence of her hero and brings an astonishing new vitality to many of his most revered songs.

A gifted song interpreter whose catalog includes three acclaimed covers albums (2000's The Covers Record, 2008's Jukebox, 2022's Covers), Marshall has a particularly strong affinity for the songwriter-poet she refers to as "God Dylan." As with the original concert (and Dylan's entire 1966 world tour), Marshall played the first half of her set completely acoustic, then went electric for the second half with the help of a full band: Guitarist Arsun Sorrenti, bassist Erik Paparozzi, multi-instrumentalists Aaron Embry (harmonica, piano) and Jordan Summers (organ, Wurlitzer), and drummer Josh Adams.

Throughout "Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert," this rare intimacy with Dylan's material illuminates every moment - from the first seconds of the set-opening "She Belongs To Me," Marshall creates the oddly charming sense of sharing songs that have lived in her heart for decades. Another song indelibly altered by Marshall's female perspective is "Just Like a Woman," which takes on a raw and endearing tenderness that adds to the sweeping sense of empathy that permeates her entire performance.

In a nod to the original concert's most famous moment, an audience member shouts "Judas!" just before "Ballad of a Thin Man," to which Marshall calmly invokes the name of Jesus. Marshall approached each song on the setlist with both sincere reverence and a deep understanding of the delicate nature of song interpretation. "When someone covers a song that you love, they can give you something that you'll remember forever because of the way they perform it, the way they sing it, the way they hum a certain line," Marshall says. "I had and still have great respect for the man who wrote so many songs that helped to develop the conscious thinking of millions of people, to shape the way they see the world," says Marshall. "Even though my hands were shaking so much that I had to keep them in my pockets, I felt very honored. It felt like a real honor for me to be standing there.