NEKO CASE - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

Neko Case is a girl originally from Virginia who, after spending her teenage years in Tacoma, Washington, decided to leave her family behind and head for Vancouver. There, in '94, she began her career as a musician, which led her to meet Carl Newman (then leader of Zumpano), with whom a few years later she would launch the New Pornographers project. In the meantime, Case kept up a parallel solo career that sounds quite different from the indie supergroup: her 1997 debut, "The Virginia" (actually credited to Neko Case & Her Boyfriends!), is steeped in country tradition, which she delights in passionately reinterpreting through a handful of classics. It served as a solid launching pad. Four more solo albums followed, along with collaborations with surf-country band The Sadies, with Calexico and with Howe Gelb, who played on what was, until now, her latest studio album, "Blacklisted", from 2002.

For the new "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" the lineup largely mirrors the one mentioned above. Case's main weapons are two: a) her voice, sublime, powerful, airy, deep, able to shift from the playful tone she uses in the New Pornographers to the evocative one she brings to country, endowed with a huge range of registers yet utterly natural, a true gift from above. b) Her songwriting, immediate, melodic yet never banal, heartfelt and incisive. It's no coincidence that the finest tracks on this "Fox Confessor" are the freest and most open ones, where voice and melody have more room to unfold and develop. Take "Star Witness", carried by a simple but perfect drumbeat and clipped guitars, where Case is a siren who enchants and seduces, showing enormous personality as an interpreter and deploying celestial backing vocals with real skill; or "Maybe Sparrow", born of a deeply felt, aggressive performance laid over mournful violins.

The album's other great asset is the musicians, exemplary in their command of country, in placing every note exactly where it belongs, in painting different yet coherent atmospheres, as on "Hold On, Hold On", a tense country-western number where the instruments charge forward without ever overshadowing Case's voice; or as when they sketch the dark urban nocturne of "The Needle Has Landed", which nonetheless surprises with a few soothing melodic surges. But they give their best on the opening track, "Margaret vs. Pauline": a calm recital, where the country accompaniment is paired with a jazzy undercurrent.

There's no shortage of tracks that dare more, putting down roots in mysterious terrain with a less linear flow, like the epic and deeply unsettling title track, with some great guitar work, and like "Dirty Knife" with its murderous stride, underscored by violins. Quality also shines through on the more secondary tracks, like the reworking of the traditional "John Saw That Number", essentially a country-rock number, driven at a moderately brisk pace and happy to make use of piano and organ notes with a vaguely rock'n'roll flavor; and "That Teenage Feeling", a sentimental romantic sketch carried along at a dancing pace.

You'll have figured it out by now: "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" is a fine record, go listen to it. That said, let's end on the bitter note. Whatever its strengths, the album leaves the impression that they weren't put to the best use: the songs could have been developed better and at greater length, and in their final form they fail to deliver everything they potentially had to offer. In an era when people rightly complain about bloated, sprawling record production, this is the one time when dwelling longer was actually called for, and it didn't happen: a real shame, one that drags a plausible near-masterpiece down to "merely" good.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

31/03/2006