11/16/14 - Madrid, Spain, La Riviera

**Cokelike** Sat 1 Nov - 19:02

11/16/14 - Madrid, Spain, La Riviera

Setlist:
Maria
Great Expectations
Naked, If I Want To
Fool
What The World Needs Now Is Love
Colors And The Kids
The Greatest
Norma Jean / Names
I Dont Blame You
Can I Get A Witness
Let Me Go
3, 6, 9
Lord, Help The Poor And Needy
Brave Liar
Maybe Not
Paths Of Victory
Remember Me
The Ocean
Werewolf
Metal Heart
Bully
Old Detroit
Say
Good Woman
Wolf Among Wolves
Satisfaction
Why
Monster
In This Hole
Pa-Pa Power
Sea Of Love

This is the 59th performance of the year and the 42nd solo performance of the year.

idlehhh Mon 17 Nov - 5:16

hi there. been reading your forum for a while and decided to finally register after i saw Chan live tonight.

i saw desperateK's post on the Barcelona thread earlier so i decided to try my hand at recording the show with my phone as well but unfortunately the results weren't very good. the piano parts are decent, aside from some hiss from my shirt and the occasional annoying chatter, but the guitar songs are mostly completely distorted which is a shame. i think i might've messed up something with the mic gain when i tested it during the opening act but it doesn't sound that loud overall so it's strange scratch

at least i got the setlist out of the experiment: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/cat-power/2014/la-riviera-madrid-spain-bcc41e2.html

needless to say the show was fantastic (i had never seen her play for so long!), surely among the best i've attended since she put out The Covers Record and hands down the most focused and enjoyable of the solo ones. Chan was funny, charming and, judging from what i've read about other shows on this tour, kept the banter to a minimum. there were some ups and downs and she had a couple of her awkward moments but never went off the rails or stopped the music for more than a couple of minutes. she was also still reeling from the flu and visibly tired but seemed the happiest and most relaxed i've seen her. some friends who saw a couple of her festival shows with the band from last summer had warned me they were very disappointed and told me not to bother so i'm really glad i didn't listen and bought tickets anyway. the only bad thing about tonight was the venue (a large club) which isn't really the best place for a show like that, but at least the sound was good.

a few things on the music... during the tour promoting Sun her voice sounded somewhat shot and it seems to be in much better shape again. for some reason, i noticed the 2-microphone flangerish effect when she sings while playing guitar annoys a lot of people and they kept hoping she'd go back to the piano which is kind of funny. some of the newer songs she played sounded great, particularly Monster and Let Me Go, but others still feel like very unfinished sketches. that "Ocean" tune doesn't seem like a VU/Lou Reed cover to me at all and other than that line it has lyrics that sound a lot like they're Chan's. i remember she used to play it years ago and it somehow morphed into Sun, the music is still very similar to that song with a different set of lyrics and some new chord changes. the guitar version of Bully sounds really menacing and nasty which i didn't expect, she played a nice bluesy improv right after it for a couple of minutes but then people started clapping along and that freaked her out so she stopped: she claimed that if that happened in the US she would shoot herself because it was just "too white", then apologized and joked that spanish people are "kind of brown" anyway so it's okay (LOL). i really loved 3,6,9 on the piano (didn't know she was playing that!) and the new Metal Heart is also great but darker and strange, took me a while to recognise that one, actually. i could be wrong but i think she said In This Hole is about Martin Luther King Jr. (?!?)

she dedicated the opening song to the missing Mexican students and said she was sorry it took her seven years to come back to Madrid in the best spanish she could muster, and later she also dedicated Paths Of Victory to Teenie Hodges as it was his birthday. she seemed genuinely happy that there were a lot of young faces in the crowd (said it was good karma), joked about her pregnancy several times, and also told a couple of amusing stories and teased people who requested songs or complimented her; someone actually asked for Rockets, which really made her chuckle. at the end of the show she told us she didn't know if she'd be able to come back for a long while now that she's going to be a mother and how it's very likely things will change a lot for her now in that sense. after the last song she stuck around a while handing out white flowers, signing stuff and chatting to people who got close to the stage as usual.

i should try to get some sleep now but tomorrow i'll try to upload the couple of (crappy) videos i have from the show.

**Nicolaoua** Mon 17 Nov - 11:48

Welcome to Ode to Chan and thank you for this nice review!

I'm not surprised that Chan said that she might have to stop touring for a while. In fact i was dreading it and i couldn't see any other way. Let's hope that it won't be for too long, otherwise i may have to ask for a visa if Chan does a few gigs in the US from time to time... scratch