Black Listed
This is a glorious record. Case is often described as alt-country, though she's been getting away from that lately, but here the country sounds are more discernible. The lyrics, though, aren't the usual Grand Ol' Opry fare. The opening track, "Things That Scare Me," sets the tone: "Fluorescent lights engage like birds 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?"
This is followed by the excellent "Deep Red Bells," in which Case's voice soars with sonic intensity, and ends with: "Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag? Past empty lots and early graves of those like you who've lost their way/Murdered on the Interstate/While the red bells rang like thunder?" The next song, "Lady Pilot," ends with the line, "We've got a lady pilot, she's not afraid to die." Perhaps you don't want to listen to that song on an airplane.
The musicality of Case's work is also enduring. "Stinging Velvet" is an old-fashioned honky-tonk song, complete with steel guitar, while "Blacklisted" is in a minor key, and could have been sung by Johnny Cash (it's about a train). In one of two songs she didn't write, "Look for Me (I'll Be Around)," Case brings to remind a torch singer, leaning against a piano in a pool of light. "Outro for Bees" is a beautiful number that is only her voice, a piano, a pump organ, and a cello.
It's hard to pick a favorite song on the album. In addition to the above there's "Pretty Girls," which seems to be set in the emergency room of a hospital: "The TV is blaring and angry, as if you don't know why you're here/Those who walk without sin are so hungry/Don't let the wolves in, pretty girls." "I Wish I Was the Moon" is a heartbreaking song of loneliness.
I have one Neko Case album of all new material to go before I've caught up (not counting her work with The New Pornographers).
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