Cat Power’s Chan Marshall has broken her long silence since 2008’s Jukebox covers album, in an interview in the new edition of The Stool Pigeon, published this week.
In it, Marshall reveals that her new album, entitled Sun, is due for release later this year. It’s set to find her back in the driving seat after teaming up with various musicians for 2006’s The Greatest and Jukebox – she played all the instruments on the album herself.
"You have a huge responsibility with the things you’re trying to create to do your best," she told the Pigeon. "There’s pressure – not from critics or anything like that, but to do something that means something in your heart. And you wanna do it the way you wanna do it.
"I wanted to prove that I could depend on myself, musically," she continued later in the interview, "because I hadn’t been playing guitar or piano in like five years and… it was just this feeling that you’re not growing if you’re not doing something creative."
She also went into the reasons behind the long gap between albums, explaining that after the release of Jukebox she had gotten into a serious long-term relationship – which broke up just as the album was being completed. “I entered a long relationship which I really wanted to be successful," she said. "You know that thing we’re all raised to want: a beautiful life with children — that family thing that is tangible? [pauses] Before, I tended to just survive, survive, survive. Gaining a lot of… not knowledge, not life experience… but I had this opportunity of travelling around the world, meeting all these people and having these experiences that have shaped who I am now.
“Then there’s this other part of me who wants to be a mother; who wants to love so deeply on a level I’ve never know; to have that connection with life I’ve never felt. It’s very different from singing a song and feeling in communion with humanity, so it was hard for me to be a believer in two completely different things. It was difficult creating both and that’s why it took so long.
"I was trying to grow my personal life in a way that I never did before," she continued. "So now that relationship is over and it’s come full circle … There’s a great loss personally in my life right now, but there’s also a gift in that I’m lucky I finished this album."
