Cat Power - Moon Pix POLL

Most popular Cat Power album on ILM according to this poll: The greatest: the CAT POWER albums poll

At least 4 songs which I love in here (metal heart, colors and the kids, cross bones style, peking saint). The rest I can't remember at all... will need to give this one another listen before voting but pretty sure my vote will end up on 'metal heart'.

say

i thrashed this album at the time it came out.. though it's been many years since i've heard it so it would be worth revisiting

I always got stuck on the first track but I think that's down to the Dirty Three bloke and his stumbling percussion.

Her take on 'Moonshiner' pales alongside Uncle Tupelo's, for sexist reasons. Women aren't as romantically fantastic at being pro- pissheads or drifters ;

metal <3

so Uncle Tupelo was totally the real deal?

Colors and the Kids or Cross Bones Style for me, but there's a lot to like here.

love "cross bones style"

The video to cross bone style annoyingly ridiculous... which it's the point, i guess... but I'm sure if I had watched the video before hearing the song I would have been permanently impaired to enjoy her music. It's not that the video is embarrassingly bad but I really really hate the indie cred ennui and cynicism dripping from every frame. The song is brilliant, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU291yKCbBE

Colors & The Kids

Totally love this album. The contributions from the Dirty Three are very apt. I agree with the earlier poll, def my fave Cat Power record.

I went for 'Metal Heart' just because its such a sad and beautiful song.

Could have happily pick a couple of others though.

You May Know Him, because of the way she sings the title the first time it appears in the song - but this is a really difficult choice

i have such a love/hate relationship with this record. at first it felt like a disappointment after What Would The Community Think? (Cat Power are the one band I'm happy to be a total arrogant "only the early stuff is good" indie snob about), then i kinda fell in love with the album, then i realized i only really like the last 4 songs. voted for "Peking Saint."

I always got stuck on the first track but I think that's down to the Dirty Three bloke and his stumbling percussion.

― Fer Jessie the Drunk Dutch Mountain Ark (Mobbed Up Ping Pong Psychos), Thursday, April 29, 2010 3:56 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

"Cross Bones Style" is truly superb and, if I may be grandiose, probably one of the best singles of the 90s. She's unbelievably sexy in the video as well. (It's a great video in general - don't know what you people are talking about.) The rest of this album has never done much for me, however - it all seems dirgey and dreary to me. I'll make a partial exception for "Colours and the Kids", which has a certain pathos in a monotonous sort of way.

yeah if you took the first song off this it would be the best album ever. as it stands, its just one of the best albums ever. dunno what to vote, the grimerapperonrollerskates.gif cross bones style video may be too easy a cop out.

yeah this is a hard one. didn't like this record at first (was first exposed to her music via you are free) but it's definitely a grower. leaning more toward "cross bones style" but "you may know him" is really great too.

Inna Cross Bones Style 4 evah

three way tie for me between: metal heart (probably the best *song*), colors and the kids (most evocative personal memories 4 me), and X-Bones Style (coolest sounding). will decide after much deliberation (ie, if i can be arsed to vote again next time this pops up on new answers).

american flag or cross bones style

She's unbelievably sexy in the video as well.

So, so true. Really good video.

there used to be an amazing video of her playing american flag live w/ the dirty three guys, hiding behind her hair.

I love "cross bones style" for the otherworldly haunting transcendent drone thing

"metal heart" is great too but I prefer other versions over the album one

what would the community think might make for a more interesting poll tho I guess I'm in the minority when I say it's her best

also, the lyrics to american flag kill me

I think Cat Power is the best video artist of anyone.

I don't think there's anything like Colors and the Kids that anyone's ever done.

I dunno, seems to be in a similar vein of mopey confessional 90s indie rock like sebadoh, american music club, daniel johnston

I mean, I love all of Moon Pix, it's my favourite album, it's all magical, but C&tK is a spell & a litany - plenty of people have sounded so personal but every time I hear that song it stops being about her halfway through and becomes about me.

(I don't think all her videos are good or anything fwiw - just that when they're on the highs are so high)

yeah, it's a great, affecting song but I don't remember being like my god *where* did that sound come from

seems like yr typical bedroom suicide stuff, with bonus waif

xp

I don't know - it's hard to say why it works for me so hard! The "yellow hair" lyric is so uncomfortably personal and it's so high-risk to make it a big sweeping river of a song and not a ghost of one but it works so totally; when I'm voting for it over Metal Heart or whatever I'm voting for being back home on holidays aged about 20, my mum coming in while that song started playing, both of us suddenly near tears for no reason at all beside it.

see if you had gone with madonna's "holiday" it would've brightened the room right up, imagine you and your mum dancing around the garden

(I like X-Bones style but watching that video I can never get over how bad she sounds singing "unbelievable"!) (I don't really like that video that much)

haha xp :)

"Colors And The Kids" cracked my heart in half one night, so I voted that. I also like "American Flag" a lot.

This was the first Cat Power record I heard. I've really liked everything I've heard since but it'd be lying to myself if I didn't admit is all been a bit of a let down after 'Moon Pix'.

pretty sure my vote will end up on 'metal heart'.

^^^^^^^

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

three way tie for me between: metal heart (probably the best *song*), colors and the kids (most evocative personal memories 4 me), and X-Bones Style (coolest sounding). will decide after much deliberation (ie, if i can be arsed to vote again next time this pops up on new answers).

― _▂▅▇█▓▒░◕‿‿◕░▒▓█▇▅▂_ (Steve Shasta), Thursday, April 29, 2010 10:28 AM (1 month ago)

went with metal heart

lot of good answers here, heartens me to know this record has moved other people as much as it's moved me.

voted cross bones style

what would the community think poll would be worthwhile too, as mentioned above

wwtct poll would be super easy for me: Nude As The News is my favorite CP track of all.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

cool with turnout except this:
Back Of Your Head 0

"Cross Bones Style" is one of the best songs of the 90's! There I said it.

'metal heart' is even better! there i said it

Seems fair

(2 last posts, that is)

What an album. Every note is shivers. Really captures the spiritual side of despair. Every enunciation of the voice and every pluck of the guitar on this album takes you right to the heart of someone caught in the middle of emptiness. It's an empty, barren album, and so beautiful because of it.

Cannot be overstated how incredible the guitar on this album is. Mick Turner brings the perfect accompaniment to what Chan was laying down with her vocals

saw her tour this, at a time when she was notorious for basically falling apart on stage

this show did not have mick turner -- not sure who the guitarist was, but he was good -- but it did have jim white glowering at everyone, not least chan herself

in any case, it was a fantastic and mesmerizing show

That's just how Australians look normally

Totally makes sense here falling apart on stage when this is her material. I have to keep myself from falling apart listening to it

I think "he turns down" is the core of this album. Maybe not the best track, but the heart of the album. How do you live if your abandoned (by God)? How do you live in an empty universe? Those are the questions I hear in every track and they're put matter of factly in said track. In lyrics and music. There's something else there I can't pin down or put words to. A playfulness not in the face of this fact, but the playfulness of this fact on the observer. The song channels the terrifying idea that no one is in control. We're at the mercy of something large. It's the horror rather than the glory of the numinous. That's the whole album to me.

Anyways what I'm trying to say is: how come none of you jokers voted for it 13 years ago? Thought y'all loved music round these parts

I remember being physically afraid listening to that song when I was 17. More than any song has ever been able to before or since. I 100% would have the normal rational scepticism about her story of writing these songs scared for her life as spirits rushed against the windows of her barn house, but that song makes me believe every word of that story.

Oh and she recorded this in Australia. A perfect cap to a perfect album

It’s a brutal and piercing song all right. She definitely slipped between the layers of this world and others making this record.

This is the piece to read about Moon Pix btw https://web.archive.org/web/20110925224152/http://messandnoise.com/articles/10560

Oh actually I now realise that’s not the piece I was thinking of, but still good.

The 33 1/3 book on this record is kind of a grab-bag of different approaches that tells the story of its creation pretty well, though whether it lets the album down I can't say because I haven't yet heard it.

On a directly-related-to-this-era-of-CP-but-contemporary note, I was just listening to the newest Mess Esque single (Brisbane's McKisko working w/ Mick Turner), and was reminded of how both how great I think their collab is as well as how underrated they are in terms of visibility/reach--to my ears they completely what was great about Marshall and Dirty Three working together without being just a xerox, esp via Turner's ability to only play great vibe-y guitar but also nail that D3 Jim White loose percussion feel (was not expecting him to nail that part of the equation w/o them needing to actually bring in Jim White himself to the session):

The 2021 album that first hipped me to them: https://mckisko.bandcamp.com/album/dream-12
Their new single: https://messesque.bandcamp.com/album/liminal-space

(Completely *nail*, ofc)

Yeah gave mess esque a few spins when that album came out. It's pretty, but I didn't get much more out of it than that. Will revisit. Thanks for the link, great article matt

This album will forever be ingrained in my memory as the soundtrack to one of the lowest points in my life when I was very depressed and developed a slight addiction to co-tylenols (when they still had pseudoephedrine in their formula). I would find non-busy parking lots, play moon pix on my car and do 4/5 cotylenols and pass out on the backseat so the day would pass as fast as possible and I could go back to bed.

I don’t think I’ve listened to it too much past it. It was a great companion and in a way it saved me, but that time of my life is way behind me now.

<3 moka

speaking of glowering antipodean drummers, jim white has a new solo album out, half of which is co-written with guy piccioto

?!?!

and meanwhile brendan canty and joe lally (among others) have a new album out on impulse!

i love it for all of them

Yay