Consider yourself lucky if you're reading this in Europe because you can still legitimately consider Neko Case to be your own wonderful little secret, that amazing artist that should be massive but only you seem to appreciate.
Case finally cracked it in the States last year with Middle Cyclone, crashing straight in at No.3 on the album chart and securing performing slots on David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon etc.
But in the UK, she's still lumped in with the alt.country scene that went out of fashion in the mid-Noughties. When she played Manchester on the Fox Confessor Brings The Flood tour in 2006, there were barely 150 people in attendance - but we all went home with big stupid grins plastered across our faces.
Blacklisted was the first Case album I ever heard, taking a punt due to being intrigued by The New Pornographers power-pop tune Mass Romantic she sang on and the fact that the Calexico/Giant Sand folk were all involved.
The front cover just added to the intrigue - she lies shoeless beneath a van stuffed with someone's possessions while a plane flies overhead.
She'd already played dead on the front of 2000's Furnace Room Lullaby but here she looks straight into the camera with a faint smile on her face, despite her position.
On the back cover, she's again on the floor but this time her red hair is framed by golden hay and shadowy deer look on - the idea seems to be that Case is an untameable force of nature, which is never less than unpredictable and usually outright dangerous in her songs.
The gatefold sleeve inside includes a dedication 'for the ladies' and features a list of the impressive support cast she's rustled up, including Dallas Good, John Convertino, Joey Burns, Howe Gelb, Kelly Hogan, Jon Rauhouse and Mary Margaret O'Hara.
Put the record on and it doesn't take long for Case's dark and mysterious country noir to hook you in, particularly when it frames her honeyed swoop of a voice, frail and tender one moment, fierce and strange the next.
If Case was more interested in playing the record company game, she could have sold millions without breaking sweat. Just listen to her version of Runnin' Out Of Fools that appears on side two. Not many can take on Aretha and hold their own but Case does just that, wringing every ounce of regret, need and defiance out of the song.
But Blacklisted is far too twisted and unfathomable to have taken on the mainstream, as Case acknowledged at the time: 'I'm not out to become Faith Hill, I never want to play an arena, and I never want to be on the MTV Video Music Awards, much less make a video with me in it.'
She's stayed pretty true to those words ever since. Middle Cyclone is her most pop-friendly record to date but check out the video for single People Gotta Lotta Nerve (in which she only appears in cartoon form), featuring the chorus 'I'm a man-man-man-eater' and a verse about a killer whale 'eating your leg and both your lungs'.
Just in case you're still not sure if she's as tough as she makes out, enjoy this on-stage banter (Case is well known for her amusing mid-set rambles, as showcased on 2004's The Tigers Have Spoken live album).
Murder hangs heavy in the air from the off on Blacklisted, with the lyrics for Things That Scare Me sounding like they've come from the pen of Jim Thompson or James Ellroy: 'The hammer clicks in place/ The world's gonna pay/ Right down in the face of God and his saints/ Claim your soul's not for sale/I'm a dying breed who still believes/ Haunted by American dreams'
Deep Red Bells sides with the potential victim and was influenced by Case's memories of living in Seattle when the Green River Killer was at large in the 1990s.
The mood can only get lighter, so how about a two-minute love song?
Outro With Bees is slow and gentle, with Burns on cello and Gelb on pump organ, as Case lilting tells her lover, while he has a glass of wine in his hand, not to get too comfortable: 'So it's better, my sweet/ That we hover like bees/ 'Cause there's no sure footing/ No love I believe'.
Humour starts to creep in with Lady Pilot ('She's not afraid to die') and a cover of Look For Me (I'll Be Around) that strips out all the neediness and comes on smoky femme fatale in a manner part Eartha Kitt and part Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction.
But, as great as the covers are, it's the originals you want to listen to because Case's lyrics are so gripping.
Pretty Girls is a song to female solidarity in a doctor's waiting room, finishing with the line 'I won't tell you I told you so', while I Wish I Was The Moon Tonight bends heavy with sweet melancholy soul.
The title track explores youthful fever one day finding peace but it's the album's willfulness that makes it such a pleasure.
The fact that Case has become a major selling act in the States on her own terms in the States is to be celebrated. Just as long as everyone continues to ignore her over here and I can carry on feeling smug about it...
No comments:
Post a Comment