After he decided that retirement was a blank check for side quests, my dad went to Antarctica on a research vessel. He floated out in a kayak on the Southern Ocean to meet the locals: Humpback whales. The giants pirouetted under the kayaks, blew steam on the visitors, and poked their heads above the water, their great, curious eyes watching. When it came time to return to the boat, the whales used their bodies to block the route. As one scientist explained, \u201cthey want to play more.\u201d My dad said he felt true awe then, fear and euphoria. These incomprehensibly large creatures, mysterious, and intelligent were essentially saying \u201crecess isn\u2019t over.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the realm in which Neko Case<\/a> rules. Like Karen Russel or Salman Rushdie, magical realism is her domain\u2014poking at reality while myth nibbles at the corners. She came from a hall of fame class of North American lyricists in the 2000s. Next to the absurdists (Andrew Bird<\/a>, Dan Bejar<\/a>), cosmologists (Joanna Newsom, Sufjan Stevens<\/a>), and the realists (Bill Callahan<\/a>, Chan Marshall<\/a>), Case weaponized mystic imagery and her own gale-powered voice to craft a career as unique as it is haunting.<\/p>\n Case broke out twice. First in the triumvirate of the New Pornographers (alongside Bejar and pop professor AC Newman): it was Case\u2019s strident, unwavering voice that opened Mass Romantic, the Porno\u2019s beloved debut, and though her adoration of Lucinda Williams<\/a> was obvious, the spikey powerchords of \u201cLetter from an Occupant\u201d revealed Case loved Siouxsie and the Banshees just as much. After two excellent and overlooked albums, her solo career stepped into the spotlight with 2002\u2019s Blacklisted. The climax, \u201cI Wish I Was the Moon\u201d sighed onto the scene, a spiritual sequel to both Fugazi\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m So Tired\u201d and Judy Collin\u2019s version of \u201cThe Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,\u201d elevating the album to underground classic status and ensuring she\u2019d have a cultish fanbase on her own.<\/p>\n 20 years ago, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood used that foundation to launch into absolute confidence. It\u2019s a perfect distillation of all of Case\u2019s eccentricities and influences. The love of pre-Beatles music is obvious from the dry, warm guitar tones and the deep, lovely reverb that scatters Case\u2019s voice like she\u2019s been plucked from the Ink Spots. It helps to have The Band\u2019s own Garth Hudson on keys, lending a grandfatherly touch and implicitly passing off a torch. Case recorded the album in Tucson and invited Arizona royalty Calexico into the studio, essentially stealing their rhythm section for the entire record. John Convertino\u2019s shuffling drum parts and Joey Burns hopping between half a dozen instruments grants a desert worn hardiness to the record.<\/p>\n All of this gives a noir-ish tinge to the songs. Case sings a smattering of them like she\u2019s an investigative reporter, frustrated at missing details. \u201cMy true love drowned in a dirty old pan of oil \/ That did run from the block \/ Of a Falcon sedan 1969 \/ The paper said \u201975,\u201d is how she opens the stunning \u201cStar Witness.\u201d She\u2019d later confirm that was a true story, based on a gang shooting in Chicago she witnessed. The official lyrics say the chorus is \u201cThere\u2019s such tender wolves \u2019round town tonight,\u201d but I always heard it as \u201cdandy wolves,\u201d recalling Warren Zevon<\/a>\u2019s \u201cWerewolves of London,\u201d Case\u2019s alluring predators either looking for more carnage or \u201cbeef chow mein.\u201d<\/p>\n Fox Confessor, from its title down, evokes Eastern European fairytales. Case\u2019s family is Ukrainian, and she described their myths as \u201cdark,\u201d \u201cfunny,\u201d and \u201cnot overly moral.\u201d See \u201cDirty Knife,\u201d which opens with \u201csuddenly the madness came\u201d as Case\u2019s voice floats above a huntsman suffering in a log cabin. Depending on the reading, it\u2019s either one of the most powerful sonic representations of a psychotic break or a literal pack of demonic wolves beating down the door of Red Riding Hood\u2019s would be savior. Case and a phantom harmony fall into a Ukrainian chant at the end, giving no closure, only an eerie chill.<\/p>\n Case updates another old archetype on opener \u201cMargaret vs. Pauline.\u201d It\u2019s a successor to Mark Twain\u2019s The Prince and the Pauper with an industrial twist. Pauline is flapper royalty\u2014the gods \u201csmoothed her hair with cinnamon waves \/ And they placed an ingot in her breast\u201d\u2014while the blue collared, rundown Margaret has \u201cjaw aches from wanting and she\u2019s sick from chlorine.\u201d The undulating pianola-style lick stumbles as Case turns the knife in their comparisons. \u201cOne left her sweater sittin\u2019 on the train \/ And the other lost three fingers at the cannery.\u201d Case would be many women over her career (and later she\u2019d claim \u201cI fucked every man I wanted to be\u201d) but starting with the album cover, Fox Confessor creates an internal dichotomy within her. Case is the glorious, luck-touched Pauline and the hardscrabble Margaret. She embodies both a cool collected beauty who radiates danger, and the poor girl who got her head lopped off on the album art.\u00a0<\/p>\n The single straightforwardly autobiographical cut is \u201cHold On, Hold On.\u201d But in opposition to the characters trapped in the thrall of their narratives on the rest of Fox Confessor, Case rallies against her own fate. There\u2019s an undisclosed punch-up at a wedding where Case is cast as a villain (\u201cIn the end I was the mean girl\u201d) but she embraces the heel turn. She leaves the party with a \u201cvalium from the bride\u201d and no beau on her arms (\u201cthank god\u201d) before turning her ire on centuries of songwriting. \u201cThat echo chorus lied to me with its \u2018Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on,\u2019\u201d she fumes as she escapes into the night. Pop choruses with tidy endings are too simple. Weddings where you catch the bouquet and find true love are too twee. To quote Achewood, most dreams (and Neko Case songs) go \u201cThe end! No moral!<\/a>\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Case\u2019s use of tenor guitar across the album makes it a perfect late fall listen. The entwining, descending riff on \u201cHold On, Hold On,\u201d perfectly captures the vision of snowflakes just starting to tumble down. There\u2019s also the music box opening of \u201cThat Teenage Feeling\u201d and the shuffling roil on \u201cThe Needle Has Landed\u201d which kicks snow off the road, like Case and Co. are driving through a chilly night to the next gig. \u201cAt Last\u201d has a shade of Indigo Girls tenderness with its silvery, shivering guitar that stays sparse, letting Case\u2019s tremendous voice holler all its glory.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a stormy, oceanic churn to these songs. Case discards the classic verse-chorus-verse format for Fox Confessor in favor of sections that appear like sudden squalls on the horizon. \u201cDirty Knife,\u201d \u201cLion\u2019s Jaws,\u201d and \u201cThe Needle has Landed\u201d all have tempo shifts that arrive like a bolt from the blue. And the title track lurches into its bridge like thunder had just hit the studio and overloaded the amps. When combined with moments of abrupt violence and tonal shifts, it feels like there\u2019s a great mass shuddering beneath the skin of these songs, a leviathan that only comes briefly into sight while breaching the surface.<\/p>\n Contemporary reviews laser-focused on the power of her voice, as though her pipes were the cake and the rest of the music so much frosting. It betrays a lack of curiosity for a fiercely intelligent, devilishly complex album that rewards dozens of subsequent listens. There\u2019s word-nerd brilliance to be found, with a delightful, rhyming mouthfeel across the album. \u201cNickels and dimes of the Fourth of July \/ Roll off in a crooked line \/ To the chain-link lots where the red tails dive,\u201d she grins on \u201cStar Witness.\u201d And the hurricane in her lungs was only powerful because she knew restraint. Her voice, of course, is never short of beautiful, but on a song like \u201cA Widow\u2019s Toast,\u201d she\u2019s also a brilliant minimalist. A chorus of Cases seem to gather around one microphone like an old radio play. When she sings \u201cspecters move like pilot flames\u201d she\u2019s describing the tidbits of sound that hover in the background of every song, small easter eggs to subconsciously direct the listener. Thanks to the dynamic contrast, when she does uncork a fastball, it\u2019s liable to break bones.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe Sparrow\u201d is the emotional summit of the album, Case beginning with a coo as she sings to some poor, broken critter. But the song picks up steam like a rushing locomotive, Case\u2019s voice rising to a howl. There\u2019s an implication of an airplane crash, then Case fully submits to simply wailing, her final flip into falsetto an absolute heartbreak. The story is purposefully unclear. \u201cMaybe Sparrow\u201d can be used as a totem for any cry of sudden, shattering grief.<\/p>\n Case has consistently anthropomorphized herself. She wanted to be the moon; she\u2019d become a tornado, a radioactive ore, even an entire continent. However, on Fox Confessor, Case is either in her own body or in that of a third person narrator, pulling back and observing. For all the apocalyptic, mythical moments, Fox Confessor is Case\u2019s most human album in its perspective. She, like us, is getting brief glimpses at the inner gears of the universe, left to ponder its meaning and her place in the machinery.<\/p>\n In her memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, Case remembered the day when she started to become comfortable with being a capital M \u201cMusician.\u201d She was in the bath, listening back to demo tapes. She recast the fight she\u2019d been in for years while soaking. \u201cI really could swim next to Moby Dick without him eating me,\u201d she said. \u201cOr me harpooning him.\u201d She had entered a conversation with her uncapturable muse, rather than trying to run him down. It\u2019s a perfect metaphor for her own career, but even better for the experience of listening to Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. We swim next to a leviathan, only partially understanding its vastness, but still always glad to be caught in its wake.<\/p>\n Nathan Stevens is a musician, archivist, and podcaster whose work has appeared in Spectrum Culture, Stereogum, and Popmatters. He currently runs the music interview website Drwoodhouse.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After he decided that retirement was a blank check for side quests, my dad went to Antarctica on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-521164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}