Blowin Indie' Wind Neko Case's "Blacklisted" Deepens the Sound of Common Country

Author: Erika Mercer

It's like going for a midnight swim during late summer in a secluded mountain lake. You're surrounded only by distant stars, the frequent gleam of moonlight teasing the rippling water and a slight breeze rustling the trees. You've swum far out, and the water is black, deep and chilly, although now and then you tread into a warm spot in the lake or catch a spark of white light bouncing off the water as it is pushed aside by your arms. The silence is enveloping, and you feel immensely lonely, though it is a loneliness that is mystifying and strangely satisfying — a feeling you greedily want to cling to and experience time and time again.
Neko Case calls her style of singing "Country Noir," and in those two words manages to get at the very core of her music. It's dark, shadowy and bleak, filled with faces hidden behind clouds of smoke, mysterious crimes long unsolved, carefully concealed pasts and tacit understandings. At the same time, it's noir with a twang, with a hint of cowboy boots and dusty, worn out bar stools. It's country music with a mask on, filled with shocks and surprises and devoid of any banality or predictability.
This unique style, though, has taken many years for the 32-year-old singer to cultivate. Born in Alexandria, Va., Case left home and set out on her own at age 15, and has since then taken to being an American nomad, setting up camp everywhere from Tacoma to Chicago to Tucson. At 18 she began playing drums in a series of punk rock bands, but it was not until 1994, when she joined the Canadian punk-pop trio, Maow, that her true talent as a singer was discovered. While playing with Maow, Case also attended the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and began recording her first solo album, "The Virginian," released in 1998 — the same year she received her bachelors from the Institute. "The Virginian," on which Case collaborates with a large and hand-picked group of talented musicians including Howe Gelb, Kelly Hogan, members of The Sadies and members of Calexico — the collection of whom she wittily called The Boyfriends — is a fairly traditional country album that, despite its conventional approach, managed to showcase her stunning voice and impress a number of critics.
Unfortunately, that same year Case's Canadian student visa ran out, forcing her to leave Canada and resign her position in Maow. Taking up residence again as an American, Case undauntedly rounded up The Boyfriends and set to work on her second solo album, "Furnace Room Lullaby," which was released in 2000. Characteristic of her untiring and undiscriminating love of music making, she also pursued a number of side projects during the recording of "Furnace." For example, she served as guest vocalist for the Canadian power-pop band The New Pornographers, appearing on their 2000 release, "Mass Romantic," which subsequently won the Juno Award for Best Alternative Album of the year.
In addition, Case recorded together with country artist Carolyn Mark as The Corn Sisters, releasing a collaborative album, "The Other Women," also in 2000. Between recordings, she found time to tour with several bands including Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
"Furnace Room Lullaby," though, was Case's true critic success of the year: a more despairing, more heartbroken version of "The Virginian," which showed critics a side of Case that was gloomier and more mysterious than they'd ever heard before. At the same time, she stunned them with her ability to convey this darker sentiment through her voice — one critic aptly described it as "a rushing brook laying down the silt of years."
This silt has built up even more on "Blacklisted," Case's third and most recent solo album, which she co-produced and recorded this year at Wavelab Studios in Tucson. "Blacklisted" is also the first album on which Case has written almost all the songs and played many of the instruments, including guitars, tenor guitars, piano, saw and drums. Meeting her professed desire to be "really adventurous" and try new approaches, "Blacklisted" certainly strays away from Case's country roots and embraces a more intense, haunting and dramatic style of songwriting and singing. Through her poetic, often stream-of-consciousness lyrics, and her lush, smooth voice, she evokes a tone of aching homesickness, now and then splashing this melancholy with a warm bit of dream, memory and optimism.
The album opens with the eerie song, "Things That Scare Me," in which Case sings, "Blackbirds frying on a wire / Same birds that followed me to school when I was young / Were they trying to tell me something? / Were they telling me to run?" These words, together with the almost sinister tone of the song, haunt the listener even after the song has finished and instill a desperate craving for any sign of hope and resolution.
Such signs of hope, like the warm spots in the chilling lake, arrive only rarely — and depart again almost immediately upon arrival, acting merely as a cruel but beguiling teaser. Resolution, though pointed at, is never fully reached. The listener is left pressing play over and over again, finding new depth, new confusion and new appeal with each listen — "Blacklisted" has a power of addiction like few other albums.