Neko Case – Destiny rides again
The disc was a glorious coming-out party, announcing the arrival of a talented new singer who also had excellent taste in material. Case supplemented half a dozen originals (co-written with various folks) with inspired cover versions of chestnuts from the catalogs of the Everly Brothers, Loretta Lynn and Ernest Tubb (plus, tossing a curve into the mix, underground pop savant Scott Walker’s “Duchess”).
Accolades soon came rolling in, along with a U.S. deal from Bloodshot, thanks to fellow singer Kelly Hogan, who caught a Corn Sisters gig at the CMJ Festival in New York City in 1996 and recommended Case to the Chicago insurgent-country label. All of which took Neko a bit by surprise. “To me, that album sounds — not from the musical standpoint, but from my particular position on the record — incredibly nervous and uptight. Because I had never sang like that before. I sang with Maow, and everybody had their equal part, but this was my thing, and it was very scary, and I just couldn’t figure out why people would be so into it.”
Largely it was because whatever trepidation she may have felt going into the process wasn’t manifested in the feel of the record. Listening to Case belt out “Duchess” and Tubb’s “Thanks A Lot” — or her duet with Newman on the Everlys’ “Bowling Green” that’s so infectious it even outshines the original, which is no mean feat — one gets the impression not of a nervous beginner, but of an assured, alive, confident artist finally finding her true calling.
That said, there is a certain uniformity to Case’s singing on The Virginian; for all the radiant energy in her delivery, “there’s no kind of dynamic,” she offers, pinpointing the lack of depth in mood and texture. It’s a different story on Furnace Room Lullaby, which finds Case developing a much greater emotional range as a singer.
“I wanted to try lots of different things,” Case says of the new album. “The thing I really wanted to avoid on the first record was that flowery girly singing that is very popular. I liked it when women sang with BIG voices; I was tired of the small flowery voices. Not that there’s no place for that, because I love that sometimes….But then I realized you can’t just have all powerful voice — there can be more than one emotion on your record, and it would be a lot more effective.”
In many ways, the record works as a companion piece to the new release by her Bloodshot labelmate Hogan, who Case calls “probably the best singer I know.” Clearly Hogan’s talent for torchy elegance has rubbed off on Case, and it doesn’t hurt that Hogan contributes backing vocals on a few cuts as well. Another guest who fits right into such vocal stylings is Ron Sexsmith, who sings along with an exquisitely soft touch on “We’ve Never Met”.
The other primary difference between the two records is that the material on Furnace Room Lullaby is all original. The songs are co-written with a variety of collaborators, but no classic country covers were included this time around — though Case says that wasn’t the intention in the beginning. “We recorded some cover songs, and John Ramberg [guitarist for Seattle band the Model Rockets] was in the studio with me, and he was like, ‘You don’t need to do any cover songs; just have it be all your own songs.’ And I was like, ‘No — I wanna do the Nick Lowe song!’ And then, later on I realized, wow, he’s right.”
That decision made the album a more personal artistic statement, and Case’s songwriting has improved enough since the first record to warrant such a move. “Guided By Wire” (written with Ramberg, drummer Joel Trueblood and bassist Scott Betts) rolls along to an effortlessly bouncy lyric; “Twist The Knife” (with assists from Ramberg and Whiskeytown’s Adams and Daly) is a bewitchingly dramatic ballad; “Thrice All American” (credited to Case/Connelly/Betts/Trueblood/Ramberg) is a beautifully bittersweet evocation of her days in Tacoma, “a dusty old jewel in the South Puget Sound.”
The song is indicative of a certain sadness Case has been feeling lately about the places of her past, and a realization that you can’t go home again. She moved to Seattle last year but ended up spending much of this past fall in Chicago, swept up so much by the Windy City’s thriving musical community that she’s planning to move there soon. She’s also increasingly disenchanted with the constantly changing face of Seattle: “We’re getting kicked out of this building because they have to make condos for rich people,” she laments of the downtown warehouse apartment that’s currently her home.
The countryside isn’t safe from the steamroller of progress either. “Even the farm where my family’s from up north, somebody bought all the land and they’re turning it into subdivisions,” she says. “It’s way up in the hills by the Canadian border, right beneath the limestone quarry where everybody in my family worked while they were dairy farming or whatever.
“I could see the piles of rocks that my parents piled up when they were kids, because they had to take all the stones out of the field. And I know they’re gonna cart them away. It just breaks my heart; I can’t even go there anymore, it feels so dislocated. You always want to think there’s some little place you can go back to, but you can’t.”
And yet, with her music, Case has found a way to go forward while keeping a window open to what has come before. She acknowledges, for instance, that while her new album is all original songs, she certainly hasn’t abandoned the practice of mining for golden oldies. “I love doing other people’s songs so much,” she says. “That’s always my favorite part of the set, usually, when we’re on tour, is, ‘OK, we get to do other people’s songs now!’
“And, there’s so much to choose from out there. There’s so many good songs that nobody pays any attention to; it’s such a fun thing just to hunt them out and work them up yourself. I often feel that I’m not doing justice to it, mind you; like, if you’re trying to sing a Roger Miller song, there’s no fuckin’ way you’re gonna make it anywhere near as good as Roger Miller can do it, because there’s nobody like him in the world ever.
“But it still feels good to sing those lines, you know?”
ND co-editor Peter Blackstock has never sung a Roger Miller tune — but, yeah, he knows.