6 posts tagged “neko case”

With one foot stuck unapologetically in the past, a review of what I've been listening to lately:

• What: Come Back to The Five and Dime, Bobby Dee, Bobby Dee
• Who: Benjy Ferree, DC local and inexplicable wig wearer. Likely frets that he was born too late to audition for Sha Na Na.
• When: Winter. On a date "of sorts." The Black Cat. CD release party. Crowd was classic DC, crippled by its own apathy. [Ed note: intentional use of ironic quote marks.]
  
• Why: Because it's your new favorite T-Rex album. Because there should be more concept albums. Because Fear and Blown Out are just great songs
• What: Merriweather Post Pavilion, an album title that could be worse. But only if you called it Nissan Pavilion.
• Who: Animal Collective, a band whose last cover art was so bad I refused to get the album
• When: A month ago, after I could no longer ignore CarrieNation's recommendation.
• Why: Twee as fuck. Makes me want to sing in rounds. Shades of Pet Sounds. Here's a great ode to not masturbating, but thinking about it anyway.

• What: 1993's Kill My Landlord (points for not pussy-footing around on a title)
  
• Who: The Coup
• When: Throw the following in a blender in the month of March: Dabysan's recommendation years ago. A renewed interest in the song "Laugh, Love, Fuck" right around the inauguration. A nice gentleman in California sending me their first two albums.
• Why: Brilliant lyrics.

• What: Middle Cyclone
• Who: Neko Case
• When/Where: DC's 9:30 Club. Friends and member of DC CockRock Club in tow. The Secretary of Education showed up and spoke from the stage, marking a weird new era in DC. Neko played with her hair lots, as she does at every show. I was not into the stagecraft. Could have done with fewer images of owls and other precious animals. It was like walking into an Anthropologie. Still, a good show for being encumbered by your own loneliness as she sings yet another song about loneliness. This Tornado is just not that into you.
• Why: Actually, I don't think this album is as good as the others. But the cover art is scary/ badass and sexy all at once. It's worth the price of admission.
  

  Middle Cyclone

  Neko Case

I got the rare pleasure of seeing some great talent in a small venue Saturday night at Comet Ping Pong in DC. Perhaps it was the two cans of Sea Hag I'd had that led me to describe the show in a text message that night as "truly grand," as well as another description about the show too obscene for the family audience of this blog. Let's just say it was dirty in a good way. I'm optimistic about the world after a drink or two, if nothing else.

Lillie Ruth Bussey opened the show for The Laughing Man and kinda stunned us into submission. She's got an interesting vocal quality, which is something I value at a time when a lot of female vocalists seem to mimic one another. I rarely remember my dreams, but that night I dreamed I had an entire conversation in vivid detail about her singing, why the singing on American Idol is uninteresting to me, and the shifting winds of public opinion about what makes good vocals. This is a long way of saying check her out.

The Laughing Man came on next. Jury is still out on them for me. But they are easy on the eyes, and worth another outing soon. They play the Black Cat this Saturday night. In the meantime, All Our Noise and a very nice gentleman there have provided this video for you. Judge away:

Other news: NPR streamed the new Neko Case record, Middle Cyclone. After a few listens, I'm partial to the song People Got A Lotta Nerve, mainly because she keeps repeating "I'm a man-man-man eater" in the chorus. Still, I'm not sure anything on the record justifies the last 30 minutes of recordings of crickets chirping. Oh, yeah, this is what it sounds like when I sing.

You know what would be great?

If a certain ginger-haired lovely will wear a shirt that says "Neko Case, make red-headed babies with me!" to the 9:30 club when we go see her sold-out show this Thursday.

You know what would be better? If the message is crudely scrawled in marker on a rumpled, dirty T-shirt.

And funnier than that? If the words "Neko Case" are crossed out and replaced with "Jenny Lewis," and he wears it when she come to D.C. with Rilo Kiley in October. 

At press time, Hot Rod is waffling on my proposal that I'll make him such a shirt to wear for the show. But I plan on gathering photographic evidence if it does happen. And you know, they would have the cutest kids. Until then, here's a nice live version of her song "Teenage Feeling" from the Sound Opinions show. Click here.

The Onion does this game every week where they ask a musician to spin through their MP3 player and comment on the first five songs that come up on shuffle mode. It's a cool idea, but I always suspect they're cheating, because few if any embarrassing tracks ever come up. I decided to play along myself. This feels scary as shit. I definitely have some uncool stuff on my iPod. And not in an ironic-hipster way. This is kinda like playing Russian roulette. Here goes.

1.  Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood/Fox Confessor Brings the Flood: Easily the best album I purchased last year. The entire album got me through a rough period. This song in particular got me through a long drive up north. In an interview on NPR's WorldCafe, Case mentioned that she was inspired by Russian folklore in writing the album. The moment I love on this song comes when she reaches an achingly beautiful high note on the line "will there be no one above me to put my faith in?" Just buy it.

2. INXS, New Sensation, Greatest Hits: I was genuinely afraid of this coming up. There's nothing redeeming I can say about this song. A few years ago, I decided Need You Tonight had a nice guitar line, it was fun to drive to, and it was on sale in a store. There. That's my defense. This is all pre-digital music, where you had to go whole hog on an album or nothing at all. When I ripped all my records onto the Mac, I didn't quite get the concept that it was a little like getting an 11th hour pardon for past musical transgressions and that I didn't have to digitally copy an entire album worth of crap over. If you need to recall how bad this song is, you're not going to do it here. Of Montreal did a nice cover of Need You Tonight.

3. Built to Spill, Strange, Ancient Melodies of the Future: This is one of those BTS songs that made me come dangerously close to deciding I didn't like them. It dances along the precipice of being a jam band song. That said, the lyric "this strange plan is random at best" might be one of my favorite in indie rock. This song kinda lumbers along in a pleasing way.

4. Wrens, I Married Sonja, Secaucus: The Wrens are absolutely one of my favorite bands playing today. And they torture me so that they haven't released an album since 2003. Secaucus is a little rougher around the edges, angry and less reflective than their masterpiece the Meadowlands. For a long time, this album was out of print and I'm told sold for criminal sums on eBay. I got my hands on a copy after a guy I briefly dated asked a bartender in Brooklyn to make a copy of the album from the bar's jukebox for him. The Wrens were still getting their sea legs on this album. But some of the songs, like Rest Your Head, just come out of the gate big, middle-fingers a-blazin. I love that. Also check out Dance the Midwest.

5. Matt Pond Pa, From Debris, Several Arrows Later: Sometimes a girl needs her indie with a side of cello and violin. The less dignified explanation for my Matt Pond Pa thing is that it's a little easier to imagine making out with Matt Pond if I'm listening to his music. See what I mean?

Brooklyn Stars is the song off this album I listen to on repeat.

Because some of you bastards have been begging me to come out of retirement. And one of you, I've discovered, has "read (name redacted's blog)" on your Outlook calendar, set for noon each day. Who am I to deny the peeps what they want?

Seems appropriate to be thinking about the best albums of 2006 right about now. Fox Confessor Brings The Flood certainly makes my list. My respect for Neko Case grows exponentially with each listen to this record. And for lyrics like:

"My true love drowned in a dirty old pan
Of oil that did run from the block
Of a falcon sedan 1969
The paper said '75
There were no survivors
None found alive."

Give a listen to Star Witness.

I'm also a big fan of listening to musicians talk about their work. She does in this NPR interview.

I've got a girl crush on Neko Case, plain and simple. Here she is live (the smart folks at NPR are doing great stuff with online music, so you can check out the full concert, but I can't link to it.)

Listen to Fox Confessor here.