But as the night went on — through a rushed first half and a powerful, more leisurely second half — it began to seem more like she was simply holding the microphone, a possible source of the feedback that had her peppering lyrics with curses, at arm's length. And so emerged shades of the old Cat Power, the one bedeviled by soundmen, prone to mid-show shutdowns, and endlessly characterized as some kind of beautiful freak. At one point, she lay on her back and announced, despairingly, “This is pissing me off.” But her voice (once the soundman turned up her vocals, no doubt risking more feedback — which wasn't, by the way, all that terrible) sounded gorgeous. And once in the swing of things, her backup, the Dirty Delta Blues Band, cooked. In the end, a fine show that nonetheless called to mind antidepressants more than booze could have used the tension, right? —Nick Catucci