Music: The voice of Neko Case dazzles at The Wilma
William Munoz
(Missoula Current) Neko Case is one of the few artists I listen to over again, year after year, since first hearing her in 2006 when she released 'Fox Confessor Brings The Flood.'
Her creative output has been steady over the years. Each album brings new awareness to the trials of the human condition with lyrics that are not only intelligent but metaphorical.
The first reaction to hearing a Neko Case song is just how beautiful and effortless her voice is. You are not aware of her taking a breath, something that many pop artists today lack. Her vocals make you feel you are going to be taken on a romantic journey, until you hear the words she is singing. She 'wields her voice like a kiss and her metaphors like a baseball bat'.
She grew up moving from place to place until her family settled in Tacoma, Washington in her teenage years. At 15, she escaped the drug scene by moving to Vancouver, B.C., enrolling in Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. While there, she began playing drums in local bands which led to her joining with the New Pornographers – a prominent indie rock band in the late 1990's.
She released her first album 'The Virginian' in 1997 while living in Seattle. She moved on to Chicago where she produced 'Blacklisted'. It was in Chicago that she saw an incident that ended up inspiring the lyrics in 'Star Witness'.
In an interview with Pitchfork in 2006, she relates how “It was one of those things where there's gang violence and somebody gets shot right in front of you, and you live it and it's horrible. And, of course, it doesn't make the news because the kid is black.... He wasn't even the kid they were looking to shoot. He was just some kid who they mistook for somebody else and they shot him. I saw it happen... The song is pieces of different people but the event is in there.
Case is on tour supporting her lastest album 'Wild Creatures,' which is a collection of 23 songs from her 20 years of musical composition. If you are just finding Neko Case, this album is perfect, if you are a long time fan of hers, the play order of the album is interesting and might challenge your ideas of her strengths.
One thing that is true about Neko Case is that her live concerts are intimate and revealing of just how powerful her voice is, not just the physical nature of her voice but the emotional reality. It's not often that a vocalist sounds as good if not better live than recorded.
Every time I have seen her live, I have come away more in awe with her and the concert at the Wilma continued this experience.