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| Track list: 1. Things That Scare Me 2. Deep Red Bells 3. Outro With Bees 4. Lady Pilot 5. Tightly 6. Look for Me (I’ll Be Around) 7. Stinging Velvet 8. Pretty Girls 9. I Missed the Point 10. Blacklisted 11. I Wish I Was the Moon 12. Runnin’ Out of Fools 13. Ghost Wiring 14. Outro With Bees (reprise) Running time: 39 minutes Released: 2002 |
Change of scenery now after a brief delve into hip hop is behind me. This album was my introduction to Neko Case and may (only may) remain my favourite of her works. There are a range of sounds here, songs both slow and fast, and like Cathal Coughlan's Black River Falls this album works wonderfully as a showcase for a stunningly good voice.
The initial bright spangly guitar is just a joy, and the depth and echo when Case starts singing - filling space - immediately sets a tone that resonates strongly with the sense of a time and place other than ours. A twangy banjo adds to the milieu of the old west. Its a short snappy song, and a very strong start, but things get better from here.
Deep Red Bells is the track that when I first heard it I knew I liked Neko Case a lot. There is a resonance to her vocal here, a mellowness to the guitar. This is more dark night enclosed space music for me than bright Saturday morning but it is like a cocoon to wrap yourself in. Growing up I was always highly dismissive of country music, stereotypes abounded and all of them hid the fact that it could be like this... powerful, stirring and full of themes. There is is a richness and a blackness to some of the guitar in this piece that I would associate more with urban-inspired tunes. That edge really gives it something.
Its cheap and dismissive but when you have a voice this good it almost doesn't matter what it is singing or accompanying. Case has, simply put, a stunning set of vocal chords. She has range, can deliver tenderness or softer lines - like on Lady Pilot - but its the resonance when she really launches into things that sticks with you, or the fullness of sound when over a strong but sparse melody. When her voice gets layered on top of itself in Tightly it is a really evocative effect, but in truth I find this track, and Look for Me which follows, to be the weakest point of the album. They slow the pace down and I don't find that Case's voice does quite enough to lift the resulting plod in the same way it does with a couple of tracks later on the disc. There's no doubt that her singing on the tracks is impressive though - the finish to Look for Me being a case in point. I just find the songs a little flat.
Stinging Velvet is the opposite of flat. Punchy from the off, it gets more so after the first verse when a bit more instrumentation joins in. There is a nice rumble to this song, and a nice expansiveness to the chorus that contrasts the echo-chamber effect of the verses. I'm not sure why I feel the chorus is more open, its just an instinctive reaction to it. I would say this is my favourite track from the disc but in truth that changes based on my mood. We move on to a lament, delivered with a full sound and perhaps a bit of an edginess in the voice - disdain or anger? A stridency in any case.
Missed the point is another favourite - this is a love song of sorts. I always think it shorter than it is. Whilst it comes in at under 2 minutes, there is a whole second verse that I always forget exists. I love the sentiment, I love the way it is communicated, its just a wonderful little vignette. The title track brings in a lonely guitar - this feels like a plaintive cry to an uncaring world, a lonesome stand against encroaching night. Then possibly the loneliest track of all... but my favourite vocal performance on the album. Case's delivery is pretty much all there is to this song for the first little bit, a solo stand against a bleak backing. Even when the accompaniment joins in, it is all secondary. There is a roll, a lilt, to the singing and a glorious musicality in her voice, rising and falling with emotional investment out the wazoo. It is the kind of performance that you either love or find overwrought - and I am on the first side of that.
Then we get to Running Out of Fools, another powerful vocal showcase, the melancholic guitars behind it are almost obliterated by the sheer emotion Case imparts on climactic lines, her voice strained and pained but bringing warmth at other points. The song itself suffers in a couple of places - notably the lead out - but it all pales behind the singing. I realise now that I don't recognise Ghost Writing at all, which is laughable really because I have listened to this disc an awful lot, including in the car, but there we go. The song is a nice gentle swell but relative to what has been before it is a bit of a climb down, especially with a minute of silence on the end of it before we get to the outro. This is a reprise of the third track, with a hazy static radio effect opening us up and overlaying the initial chords. It resolves to a nice keyboard line, and Case's voice sounding very distant, like over a bad wireless signal. It could be out of Fallout or Bioshock or any number of such properties that have a 50s aesthetic and a broken world. Its a short album, made shorter by some silence and a reprise, but a very, very good one all the same.
The initial bright spangly guitar is just a joy, and the depth and echo when Case starts singing - filling space - immediately sets a tone that resonates strongly with the sense of a time and place other than ours. A twangy banjo adds to the milieu of the old west. Its a short snappy song, and a very strong start, but things get better from here.
Deep Red Bells is the track that when I first heard it I knew I liked Neko Case a lot. There is a resonance to her vocal here, a mellowness to the guitar. This is more dark night enclosed space music for me than bright Saturday morning but it is like a cocoon to wrap yourself in. Growing up I was always highly dismissive of country music, stereotypes abounded and all of them hid the fact that it could be like this... powerful, stirring and full of themes. There is is a richness and a blackness to some of the guitar in this piece that I would associate more with urban-inspired tunes. That edge really gives it something.
Its cheap and dismissive but when you have a voice this good it almost doesn't matter what it is singing or accompanying. Case has, simply put, a stunning set of vocal chords. She has range, can deliver tenderness or softer lines - like on Lady Pilot - but its the resonance when she really launches into things that sticks with you, or the fullness of sound when over a strong but sparse melody. When her voice gets layered on top of itself in Tightly it is a really evocative effect, but in truth I find this track, and Look for Me which follows, to be the weakest point of the album. They slow the pace down and I don't find that Case's voice does quite enough to lift the resulting plod in the same way it does with a couple of tracks later on the disc. There's no doubt that her singing on the tracks is impressive though - the finish to Look for Me being a case in point. I just find the songs a little flat.
Stinging Velvet is the opposite of flat. Punchy from the off, it gets more so after the first verse when a bit more instrumentation joins in. There is a nice rumble to this song, and a nice expansiveness to the chorus that contrasts the echo-chamber effect of the verses. I'm not sure why I feel the chorus is more open, its just an instinctive reaction to it. I would say this is my favourite track from the disc but in truth that changes based on my mood. We move on to a lament, delivered with a full sound and perhaps a bit of an edginess in the voice - disdain or anger? A stridency in any case.
Missed the point is another favourite - this is a love song of sorts. I always think it shorter than it is. Whilst it comes in at under 2 minutes, there is a whole second verse that I always forget exists. I love the sentiment, I love the way it is communicated, its just a wonderful little vignette. The title track brings in a lonely guitar - this feels like a plaintive cry to an uncaring world, a lonesome stand against encroaching night. Then possibly the loneliest track of all... but my favourite vocal performance on the album. Case's delivery is pretty much all there is to this song for the first little bit, a solo stand against a bleak backing. Even when the accompaniment joins in, it is all secondary. There is a roll, a lilt, to the singing and a glorious musicality in her voice, rising and falling with emotional investment out the wazoo. It is the kind of performance that you either love or find overwrought - and I am on the first side of that.
Then we get to Running Out of Fools, another powerful vocal showcase, the melancholic guitars behind it are almost obliterated by the sheer emotion Case imparts on climactic lines, her voice strained and pained but bringing warmth at other points. The song itself suffers in a couple of places - notably the lead out - but it all pales behind the singing. I realise now that I don't recognise Ghost Writing at all, which is laughable really because I have listened to this disc an awful lot, including in the car, but there we go. The song is a nice gentle swell but relative to what has been before it is a bit of a climb down, especially with a minute of silence on the end of it before we get to the outro. This is a reprise of the third track, with a hazy static radio effect opening us up and overlaying the initial chords. It resolves to a nice keyboard line, and Case's voice sounding very distant, like over a bad wireless signal. It could be out of Fallout or Bioshock or any number of such properties that have a 50s aesthetic and a broken world. Its a short album, made shorter by some silence and a reprise, but a very, very good one all the same.
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