Neko
Case and Her Boyfriends
Satyricon
125 NW 6th Ave., 243-2380, 10 pm Friday, March 3, Cover
Furnace Room
Lullaby is on Chicago's Bloodshot label, probably the finest
rogue-country outfit in the land (www.bloodshotrecords.com).
At 10 on a Thursday morning, a phone call shakes Neko Case
from her sleep. She answers in a voice cracked and comatose,
a half-step slower than conversation pace and about 50 percent
less forthcoming than your average anonymous State Department
flack.
This is a little weird, because when she sings with her
country band the Boyfriends, Neko Case sounds like she has
lungs of solid, smoke-scorched brass, and her pains and
triumphs lay naked to the world. With her Boyfriends, Case
has just released Furnace Room Lullaby, the kind
of crushing, soaring, bare-knuckled country record Nashville
has forgotten how to make.
Furnace Room is so good, you'd think Case--who grew
up in Tacoma (and elsewhere), started her career in Vancouver,
B.C., and now lives in Seattle--would be crowned Heartbreak
Queen of the Great Northwest. And that would be fine and
worthy, but there's just one problem: Neko Case is out of
here.
"Seattle is too expensive, and it's too damned crowded,"
Case says as the veil of sleep parts a little. "I'm getting
kicked out of my building so they can make it into condos
for yuppies. It's hard to even think about it."
Case is bound for Chicago, a city she says she can afford.
At first, it's hard to imagine a singer whose best song
is a defiant anthem in defense of much-maligned Tacoma outside
the influence of our wet, regional manic depression. But
then again, her singing voice is braised in the twang of
Virginia, where she was born, and the all-American City
of Big Shoulders seems a perfect destination for a musician
who uses the nation's native sounds to evoke every long,
sad night ever.
"Country music has nothing to do with geography," Case
asserts. "My grandma listened to country music, all the
popular singers of the time. I guess that's where I got
it. I didn't get it by living in any one particular place."
Wherever or however she got it, she got it. Furnace
Room Lullaby captures the feel of American hinterlands
urban and rural: the hard-bitten working-class neighborhoods,
the low-down beerhalls that haven't changed since Eisenhower
and hope-to-God won't. Sometimes Case and her well-schooled
band roll with barrelhouse élan; sometimes they sway
through tragic ballads that can make you half-drunk just
by suggestion.
Unlike many of the alt-country acts with which she's inevitably
lumped, Case doesn't sound like she's making coy, postmodern
references to the country tradition. She sounds like she's
staking a vigorous claim on a piece of it, taking her place
alongside the steel-backboned women of classic country she
admires--grrls like Dolly, Patsy and, most of all, Loretta.
"Loretta Lynn is the most punk rock human being on earth,
and she doesn't have to try very hard," she says. "She's
a controversial, forward-movin' lady. There isn't a punk
song around that's more shocking than 'The Pill'. She's
my heroine."
Twenty years on, some may say the same of Neko Case herself.
She's that kind of good, and even if she has to go into
exile to make it, it's better-than-even money that she will.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published March 1,
2000
|
