Fox Confessions from Neko Case

I've been feeling rather poorly these last few days -- and don't ask me with what - it's low grade but unpleasant.

Anyway, I got it together for a few hours to go see a concert last night.

NEKO CASE has been plying her trade for a number of years now. She's one of the voices in the alt.group New Pornographers, and she can often be found palling around with friends The Sadies and Calexico. Or maybe you caught the weird fooferal a few years back when Playboy named her its sexiest indie artist (or something like that.)

Anyway, Case is famous for her brilliant red hair and supple, clear, and bone-chillingly pure torchy voice. Like a lot of artists who don't quite fit in the box, it's been hard to know where to slot her. This is complicated somewhat by the fact that, up til now, her songwriting hasn't always met the challenge posed by that sing-it-to-the-rafters voice. Her most successful album to date, I believe, was a live EP she released last year with the Sadies backing her. That CD, "The Tigers Have Spoken" showed some of why she's so prized as a live performer, and featured a few covers as well as some of the songs she wrote with The Sadies.

Last night, Toronto's refurbished (if still unfinished) Danforth Music Hall played host to the second date of her tour for her new album Fox Confessor Brings The Flood. I was excited to see this show because the album has been blowing me (and a lot of critics) away.

Neko acknowledged during the show how much working and writing with The Sadies has helped and changed her ("they built me from the ground up," she said.) The songs on the new album are haunting, bloody, visceral sketches that plumb the dark territories of the human heart. If you're singing around a campfire singing a bunch of murder ballads in the middle of the desert at night, well, you kind of want Neko Case and her singing "mate" Kelly Hogan there.

The interplay between Case and Hogan's vocals have always been a high point of their live shows. (I had a chance to see them sing The Band's "Evangeline" with The Sadies and Garth Hudson on Keyboards last month in a small Toronto club. Yes. It was as good as it sounds.)


After getting off to a slow start (the mix was muddy for the first few songs) the evening settled into an arresting, if odd, vibe. Neko said the Danforth Hall was a little "spooky," which works with the new material on the album just fine. We all know the drill by now: the new songs are the stick on every tour, til you get to the carrot of the old favorites. Not so this time. This was one of those few shows where the new songs were the highlight. They served to underline just how strong that new material is. These are the songs that have garnered her the best reviews and acclaim of her career, along with a recent appearance on the Tonight Show.

Then she sneaks up on you with something like her lovely cover of Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain."

I remember being fascinated and energized by the inspiration that Paul Thomas Anderson took from the songs of Aimee Mann when he crafted Magnolia. To me, Neko Case is that kind of inspirational artist. I put on her CD and drive the dusty byways of songs about dirty knives and coming in at three a.m. "Alone, Thank God," and I imagine the time when I can lovingly edit a scene of one of my shows around those rapturous vocals. I want to hear her sing Leonard Cohen. I want to write a Magnolia to Neko.