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Neko Case
I'd be hard pressed to think of another musician who leads a double life quite like Neko Case. She's both an ruby-throated country noir (...but not alt-country, or Americana, or cowpunk, mind you) chanteuse and a sassy indie rock frontwoman. Exene Cervenka's double duty in X and The Knitters is the closest comparison one can muster, maybe.
Anyway, Ms. Case's double duty all started in 2000, a year in her discography that boasted the release of her second solo album (with Her Boyfriends as the backing band), Furnace Room Lullaby and The New Pornographers' debut effort Mass Romantic (not to mention The Other Women, the only album released by her rough-hewn side project with Carolyn Mark, The Corn Sisters). Since then, Ms. Case has carefully navigated the twin tracks of success in both her solo work and her gig with The New Pornographers, but it still seems that there's no crossover between her discrete groups of fans.
Which is a shame, really. The No Depression crowd are missing out on some of the best pop songs written in the past decade or so by giving The New Pornographers a pass. (Don't worry, The Queen of the Front row is writing them up further down on the SYITP schedule.) And twang-averse indie kids are missing out on the pleasure of hearing one of the best voices (reminiscent of old-school honky tonk angels Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, and Wanda Jackson) that's come along ... well, a heck of a long time -- or at least since kd lang. And hey, if it makes you feel better, Ms. Case is banned for life from the Grand Ole Opry for stripping down to her brassiere during her first -- and as it turned out, last -- performance there.
Perhaps the most wonderful thing, though, about Ms. Case is that her songs are total gothic extravaganzas, the kind that takes place on the wrong side of the tracks. There's murder, betrayal, petty crime -- the darker the better. (I once saw her play a set in a Masonic robe adorned with a skull and crossbones that she gleefully told the crowd she'd found at one of Austin's best jumble shops earlier that day.) This darkness also pervades her choice of covers -- she's infused a creepy levity to songs ranging from Loretta Lynn's "Rated X" to Neil Young's "Dreaming Man" to Scott Walker's "Duchess" to the Dee/Wood standard "Look for Me (I'll Be Around)" popularized by Sarah Vaughan. And her powerful, sweeping voice carries all these songs -- originals and covers -- off perfectly, whether she's lamenting the heartbreaking and cheating ways of a lover, or the fact that ever since she murdered that unfaithful bastard, he's taken to haunting her every night.
Neko Case - Thrice All American
Neko Case - Make Your Bed
Neko Case - Stinging Velvet
Neko Case - Hex (live)
(Neko Case's albums are available at Amazon and at the iTunes music store. Her latest, album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, will be released on March 5, 2006 on Anti-/Epitaph.)
Shadows tags: nekocase.
Posted by Little Miss Rock'n'Roll at 01.16.06 at 4:00 AM
Comments
I would have paid so much money to see her strip at the Grand Ole Opry. Damn.
Posted by: Queen of the Front Row at 01.16.06 at 6:04 PM
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