WAYWARD GIRL.(Concert Review)

Near dusk one evening a few weeks ago, the thirty-one-year-old singer and songwriter Chan Marshall, who performs and records under the name Cat Power, made an appearance with her backup band at Castle Clinton, in Battery Park. Built in 1811, Castle Clinton is a squat red sandstone fort that has been an aquarium, an immigration center, and an opera house, and its history is almost as jumpy as the performance style of Chan Marshall herself. Jumpy and perverse, excruciating, and ultimately beautiful.

It is foolhardy to describe a Cat Power event as a concert. A concert involves the playing of music or songs in some kind of order, with short breaks and maybe a little ...