Neko Case and the hungry unknown
Neko Case. She has a long, mournful voice. Her songs jangle in your head, weird and passionate, heavy and alive in your chest when you sing along.
When I moved to Seattle a few years ago, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood had just come out. I bought it on a Saturday in March and twisted my ankle walking home from the record shop. I had to crawl out of the street, crying. A kind stranger and his little girl were just leaving a movie and he offered to drive me home. Once there I gave him a crippled, mortified thank you and hobbled down the brutal breakneck concrete stairs to my dank basement apartment. I wrapped two frozen chicken breasts around my ankle, as I didn’t have any ice. Then I listened to that album all weekend and it soaked into my bones. At the time, I was clinging to a temp job and hoping I could make my tiny rent if I had to skip work come Monday. “Margaret vs. Pauline” seemed to relate to my situation somehow, and lent some perspective; sure, I could lose my job, but poor Margaret “lost three fingers at the cannery.” “John Saw That Number” is cheerier, bounding along with strummy guitar. The track that I listen to the most, though, is very short; it’s almost only one breath long, just a slow, exalted little hymn called “At Last.”
The cover for Furnace Room Lullaby is staged like a crime photo and the title track is like a black, sonorous wave: relentless, it drags you under and keeps you for its own. From Blacklisted, “Deep Red Bells” has the same sort of gut-deep hook, with a shivery chorus about popsicles in summer. The stand out for me on that one is “I Wish I Was the Moon,” an absolute anthem of loneliness, dreamy and lovely and achingly still.
The first Neko Case song I ever heard, and the one that made me love her, is the appropriately titled “Favorite” off her electrifying live album, The Tigers Have Spoken. I was driving to work and listening to WPRK (the only thing worth listening to in Orlando, FL) and the DJ played it: it sounded exactly like waking up in the full dark from a dream that feels hauntingly important — all golden shadows and the dangerous promise of redemption, a red-headed angel singing to you about the lure of the hungry unknown.
I didn’t know Neko Case was from Tacoma, and it turns out my boyfriend put out an album by a guy who’d dated her briefly. I also didn’t know she was in the New Pornographers, and I’m absolutely assuring you that their stuff is 167% awesome. As for Neko alone, every album she has out is well worth your while, and I invite you to discover her for yourself.
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
This review is lovely. I just happen to be in the market for some new music- thanks.
She’s really super great, and I think you’ll love her stuff.