Cat Power

Since 1992 · United States

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Behind them, left to right: Siouxsie & The Banshees, Nico, The Replacements, The Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Hüsker Dü, The Cure.

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Moon Pix (1998)

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Reportedly written in a single anxious night, Moon Pix keeps its arrangements spare — guitar, drums, Marshall's low, unhurried voice — leaving plenty of space for the record's unsettled mood to sit undisturbed. "Cross Bones Style" rides a hypnotic, repetitive guitar figure that never quite resolves, matching a lyric that reads as somewhere between a lullaby and a warning. "Metal Heart" shows the same tension in a more overtly gospel-inflected arrangement. It's a record built almost entirely on atmosphere and restraint, trusting a handful of musical ideas to carry the whole thing.

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Cat Power

Moon Pix · 1998

Chan Marshall began recording as Cat Power in the mid-1990s, building a reputation for hushed, unpredictable songs and famously erratic live performances that could range from transcendent to abandoned mid-song. Her early albums, produced with members of Bedhead and later Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, established a spare, blues-inflected sound built around her voice's low, weathered quality.

Moon Pix (1998), reportedly written in a single night after a frightening experience alone in a rural Australian house, is generally considered the fullest realization of that early style. Marshall's later work, including a well-received run of albums in the 2000s and a series of cover albums revisiting soul and pop standards, broadened her range considerably, but the raw, unguarded intensity of her mid-1990s records remains a persistent reference point for younger songwriters working in a similarly spare, confessional mode.