Moon Pix

Cat Power

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 22, 1998)
• Original Release Date: September 22, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Matador Records
• ASIN: B000009VOL
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #33,564 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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  #25 in	Music > Indie Music > Alternative Rock > Singer Songwriters
  #98 in	Music > Alternative Rock > Singer-Songwriters

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

Amazon.com

Singer Chan Marshall takes intimacy to a new level with the eerily lovely song cycle of Moon Pix. The narrative revolves around a nightmare figure who beckons toward a location that sounds rather like H-E-double hockey sticks. The starkness of this ghost story is mirrored in the austerity of the atmospheric music. Joined by Jim White and Mick Turner of the Australian slow-rock band the Dirty Three, Marshall uses spare guitar, flute, and piano arrangements to create the sounds of the last singer left on a postapocalyptic landscape. As Marshall sings in "Say," "If you're looking for something easy, you might as well give it up," and that lyric is the best description of this difficult and brilliant album. --Lois Maffeo

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 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

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.

22 of 24 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)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark and Pure: Perfect, October 29, 1999

By	patrick heyraud (Washington DC and France) - See all my reviews

I listened "What would the community think?" thousands of times and I must confess that I waited more than a year to buy "Moon Pix". I didn't think Cat Power could do another album like that, with this kind of black magic. I didn't want to be disappointed. I was wrong... "Moon Pix" is reaching higher level of beauty; if you don't agree with me, just try to press "play" when you are alone, put out the light and listen to the whole album. If some friends of mine are reading this review, they will remember the idea. I can't understand why people are trying to compare Cat Power with Lisa Germano, Tori Amos or Paula Cole (Paula Cole?? that's a joke or what?). Cat Power is living in her own world, not in ours. She's a wonderful loser and I don't think the kind of recognition Tori Amos has would fit her. Just one more thing. I have always been a Sonic Youth fan and I loved the Sonic Youth's rythms and sound on the previous album. But, finally, CatPower's songs are far more intense along with a flute or a clarinet.