Cat Power
Moon Pix
(hear it)

Cat Power's Moon Pix is one of many incredible "indie" albums which were created in the late 90's, never to be equalled. Neutral Milk Hotel's The Aeroplane Over the Sea was their last, OP8 never existed again after Slush and I think the members haven't approached it on their own, Smog's Knock Knock was never matched later, and so forth.

While Cat Power has made fantastic songs since, none of her albums have as a whole been as consistent and coherent as Moon Pix.

I often think about how we want artists to be crazy. By we I mean all of us, artists included. We expect them to travel into the parts of the soul we fear to tread, bring back some picture or story about it, and then turn around and do it again. But then the music business has to ensure that their crazy artists don't get too crazy, for fear that the investment will be lost. It's a bad conflict, made worse in that both requirements, that artists be crazy and that they make salable product, are unjustified to begin with.

bb, 13 March 08