By Paul Robicheau

Fun may seem like a relative term for a singer who performs fragile, melancholy songs in dim stage light and doesn’t allow photographers, though cell phones rose like stars in her galaxy to record videos.

“No way. Oh, man.” Chan Marshall — better known as Cat Power – sighed and turned her back to the Roadrunner audience, facing the drum kit to pause and collect herself. She’d just run into an awkward coincidence, recalling  when she’d played the Middle East Upstairs three decades ago and asked for the whereabouts of the guy from the club. It took her a while to hear shouts that “The owner died yesterday,” with some calling the venue’s gracious host Joseph Sater by his first name.

After a moment, Marshall turned back to the crowd and softly said, “This song is for Joseph,” shuffling the tour’s usual final tune to the middle of Wednesday’s encore stretch. “I’ll be seeing you,” she sang, creeping her way into that Billie Holiday favorite with a low hush. “In all the old familiar places, that this heart of mine embraces, all day through.”

Earlier, Marshall marveled that she herself was still around on the 20^th anniversary of The Greatest, featured in its entirety on this tour and arguably her best album of originals. Through her career, after all, she’s had documented struggles with mental and physical health and has been prone to erratic performances.

“Who knew I’d be alive and have fun singing these songs,” Marshall said after a gritty, organ-lashed stomp through “Could We,” one track from The Greatest reimagined on her new three-song EP Redux. Fun may seem like a relative term for a singer who performs fragile, melancholy songs in dim stage light and doesn’t allow photographers, though cell phones rose like stars in her galaxy to record videos.

Marshall cut a brighter, stylish figure onstage, appearing in a white suit with short, platinum-streaked hair to match. Yet she still lapsed into a loose murmur of dusky vocals with shifting, hard-to-decipher lyrics amid the modest swirl of her four-piece band when she began the night with The Greatest’s opening title track, altering its first-person pronoun to tack on the final thought, “Once we all wanted to be…”

“Living Proof” picked up the pace, sprinkled with barroom-style piano from Gregg Foreman that echoed its original recording with Memphis R&B veterans. “It’s not your face or the color of your hair,” Marshall sang. “Or the sound of your voice, my dear, that’s got me dragged in here.” She cupped her hand against her cheek as if to project her voice. “Do you have living proof? Well, I am the answer, I am living.”

But it was the Redux “Could We” that broke open the possibilities for Cat Power’s run through the album. After the stark lament “Where Is My Love?” with slightly more reverb on her voice, Marshall turned less memorable material from the album’s back half on its head. She sang through an electronic vocoder effect in a rather long “The Moon” (its tempo accelerating under her affirmation, “You are the moon”), “Islands” floated with slide guitar from Henry Munson and chunky electric bass by Erik Paparozzi, and “After It All” summoned a spooky blues clamor. And drummer Ben Lecourt provided a firmer beat to a pulsing march through “Unhate,” a rear-view revision of The Greatest’s self-loathing rumination “Hate.”

Cat Power. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Marshall dug herself a hole trying to inject some jokes (and even an awkward Dave Chappelle impersonation) before sliding into “Love and Communication,” where she sang “love, love, love” toward the end of that last track from The Greatest, capping the first 50 minutes of the 80-minute concert.

That loosely defined roadmap complete, the show opened up in an encore slot that included “I Don’t Blame You” and “Good Woman” (with Paparozzi lending acoustic bass) from Cat Power indie-rock gem You Are Free and the Kitty Wells-recorded 1950s country song “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.”

“That’s for all the bad, bad girls,” Marshall announced of that twangy tune. “We know who we are.” Cat Power has long made covers a feature in her repertoire (even recreating an entire Dylan show for her last local concert), and two other covers that round out the Redux EP proved highlights of Wednesday’s final stretch.

First, Marshall pulled out James Brown’s pleading “Try Me,” initially attempted in sessions for The Greatest. Then, when she no longer had “I’ll Be Seeing You” as the ruminative denouement to follow the drum machine-goosed “Manhattan,” Cat Power closed with Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” popularized by Sinéad O’Connor.

Granted, Marshall couldn’t match the power of those definitive showcases for Brown and O’Connor, but with both, she hit the right, resonant spot. And before the singer gave lingering waves and bows to the two-thirds-full Roadrunner crowd on he way out, she rattled off parting platitudes like “Fight the power” and “It’s your life,” and finally, “Thank you, Joseph.”

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian in addition to writing and photography for The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.