Moon Pix

Cat Power | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 22, 1998)
• Original Release Date: September 22, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Matador Records
• ASIN: B000009VOL
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,112 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #2 in Music > Indie Music > Alternative Rock > Singer Songwriters
  • #31 in Music > Alternative Rock > Singer-Songwriters
  • #82 in Music > Indie Music > Alternative Rock > General

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com's Best of 1998

Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, has created an album, Moon Pix, that somehow manages to be both complex and difficult as well as stark and spacious. It's an interesting contradiction mirrored in Marshall's vocal and lyrical talents; her voice soars and croons, sometimes trading melodies with a wandering flute line, while her lyrics are powerful, inscrutable, and fiercely intimate. Two of the Dirty Three evoke a subtle instrumental landscape upon which she wanders, a place less haunting than haunted; specters of lost friends, lost loves, and unrealized dreams abound. There is beauty here, but the kind of beauty found in the crushed shell of a bird's egg or a cemetery in fall. Not an easy listen, but a necessary one. --Tod Nelson

Product Description

No Longer includes bonus tracks. 1998 release.Standard jewelcase. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, April 4, 2003

By 

"me-jane" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moon Pix (Audio CD)

When I asked a friend to give me something tranquil to listen to while I study, she gave me "Moon Pix" on tape. Stilling and haunting, it proved entirely wrong for my purposes, being just the kind of music that makes you gaze off into the distance for long moments, forgetting where you are...Not that I minded.

Spooky and off-kilter, this album is maudlin the best way. Chan Marshall (is that her name?) adopts a kind of child-visionary persona, delivering an idiosyncratic mixture of surreal, direct, and insinuating lyrics that are enough to rend your heart the more you hear them. Her voice is husky yet pure at the same time, and she's at her best with minimal instrumentation, just stark vocals and a muffled guitar, sounding like the saddest, most hopeful person on earth singing to herself in an empty room. If you know what I mean...
Nonetheless, I can understand why a lot of people might fail to see the weird beauty in this album, especially upon first listen, and it's very difficult to know whether you're the kind of wistful oddball this will appeal to unless you try it for yourself. Take a gamble and see.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars People give out 5 stars too easily, March 6, 2003

By 

D. Lisoway - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moon Pix (Audio CD)

I didn't love this album when I first heard it. I thought it was "nice"... "beautiful" even... but that was all. That was in the summer of 2001. Today I would rather sever my right arm off at the shoulder than be deprived of this great work. Chan + the dirty three + Australia = perhaps my favorite album of all time. I know there are a lot of five star reviews out there, and I've added one more to the pile, but you may take comfort in knowing that this is the only review I'll bother to do because Moon Pix has come to mean so much to me.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars mesmerizing folk, January 28, 2000

By 

Charles R Gigante - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moon Pix (Audio CD)

I was extremely sceptical to listen to this record. It was a suggestion from an ex-girfriend, and I really didn't want to like it. I reluctantly popped a copy of Moon Pix into my car stereo and gave it a shot. From the opening 'paul revere' drum loop to the last breath of chan marshall's voice, i was hooked. This record is simply one of the most honest and remarkable independent releases of the nineties. When I say honest, I mean it. There's an authenticity in miss marshall's music that can be found on very few records of the same musical nature. Moon Pix is not a stunning technological breakthrough, nor does it make any profound musical revelations; What it does do is allow the listener to be fully absorbed and entranced by probably one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. Honesty...let's explore this idea. Critics could (and do) write this record off as a girl trying too hard to 'sound' honest. What I don't understand is the reasoning these critics use. Here is a songwriter pouring her emotions into the public's ears with everything she can give, and its passed off as 'trying too hard'? Give me a break. That's exactly what makes this record so perfect. Chan's ability to craft these tunes with as much emotion as I've ever heard is not just unique in these musically apocalyptic times, but is so important. So 'boo-hoo' to you closed minded music fascists. Try writing a song with only two chords and make it as beautiful as a chopin piano concerto. This album made me second guess my leaving my ex... Man it has to be good!