How do you even review a show at a place like the Roseland? It’s almost as though there are two different shows to discuss—there’s Cat Power, and then there’s Cat Power At the Roseland. I never saw Ms. Marshall in the heyday of her mumbling, stage-abandoning shenanigans, but I have seen her perform multiple times over the last three years, including a jaw-dropping, career spanning, 2-plus hour show at the Aladdin last year. Her shows are, nowadays, pretty spectacular. But Cat Power At the Roseland is another issue entirely…

Here (after the jump!), in an attempt to cover “both shows,” are the things I’ve noticed over the last few years…

( It’s worth mentioning, too, that I have no idea how Liza Lubell’s pictures came out so wonderfully, given the lighting situation in that place. Good grief!)

1. Cat Power (Chan Marshall) has this unmistakable tone, where her voice makes the noise that your heart wants to make, or would make if it could make a noise at all. It’s a great voice, of course, but it’s also more than that—I’d go so far to say that it feels like an emotion manifest, like if you had an emotion in your hand the same way you might have a rotating fan, and then you plugged it in and it just started going. Her voice just goes in this indescribable way.

2. The Roseland is the coldest and most uncomfortable place I can think of to see a show. I have a longstanding theory that someone involved in its construction or design must’ve been straight-edge or at least very strongly anti-drinking, and so was hellbent on making the bar setup at the Roseland into the most awkward, unpleasant, uncomfortable drinking experience imaginable.

3. Seeing Cat Power perform, the songs tend to bleed together, so that everything sounds somewhat the same and you lose track of what you’ve heard or whether you can understand a word she’s saying. (You usually can’t, unless you know the song pretty well.) The thing is, that’s okay. In fact, it’s actually better than okay, because her songs become so deeply personal when you hear them at home, that the live show inadvertently lends itself to spacing out on your own tangents. You think about your own loves, your weird emo secrets, whatever it is in your life that makes you listen to Cat Power, her shows bring you to that place—which is pretty wonderful, actually.

4. Even at the Roseland, with random drunk girls yelling in the balcony, justifying their rudeness by shouting “This is a bar, damn it!” (It’s not. It’s a venue. There’s a bar downstairs, thanks.), tonight’s version of “Metal Heart” was so huge and theatrical and perfect. The Dirty Delta Blues Band comprises some pretty serious players, and this was easily the best moment of the night, with deep reverb-heavy basslines and really rich piano work, it was vastly superior to the original, even. Yowza.

5. From far away, Chan Marshall has this spectral, gorgeous quality where you can’t really get a good look at her, but you know (and you’re right) that she’s stunning, even as she sort of tilts around stage like a tangled string puppet. Up close, on the other hand, she’s odd and fierce, she contorts her face a lot, and what seems oddly graceful seems really tense at the same time, as though she might turn into her imagined boxing star and just knock you out, just because.

6. As I walked out of the show I was under whelmed, not disappointed, but certainly not thrilled. But it was the Roseland, not Cat Power, that faded into the background over the last 18 hours. So, the lesson: Cat Power is a more good than the Roseland is bad.