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Neko Case is responsible for a string of acclaimed solo studio recordings, starting with 1997�s The Virginian and ending (most recently) with 2002�s highly praised Blacklisted. Now comes The Tigers Have Spoken--an 11-song, 35-minute live release, recorded mostly at a handful of shows played earlier this year in Chicago and Toronto.
Neither a �hits compilation� nor a stopgap CD (her next studio record is tentatively scheduled for Spring 2005), Tigers is a charged collection of new original material, selective covers, and one previously hard-to-find cut--�Favorite,� the first song Neko ever wrote herself from start to finish, until now available only on the tour-only disc Canadian Amp. Something of a contrast to the darker Blacklisted, The Tigers Have Spoken highlights the vibrant, joyful side of Case�s music--a side which, though it doesn�t often get mentioned in the press, her listeners have wanted to hear preserved for some time.
�When we play,� says Neko, �people always come up and say, �Are you going to do some upbeat stuff? Are you ever going to bring a drummer?� This record�s sort of for them. "
For the fans it may be; but the sources of the album run deeper than that. The music on Tigers unrolls, in part, like a brief history of the sounds that first made Neko want to play. As a kid in Washington, Neko�s family introduced her to country music by way of Marty Robbins, while she took in punk shows by bands like the Fastbacks and Nomeansno. As a college student in Vancouver, Neko first began playing in the punk trios Maow and Cub. Later she joined the New Pornographers, a Canada-based indie-rock collective that won a Juno (the Canadian music industry�s Grammy) for their 2000 debut, Mass Romantic.
As a solo artist, Neko�s records have been well received. The Virginian won her early notice, but 2000�s Furnace Room Lullaby--all of which was written, either solo or collaboratively, by Case herself--both widened and galvanized her fan base. The exquisite follow-up Blacklisted garnered accolades from venues as diverse as Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, Rolling Stone, and GQ. But when it came time to assemble a live record--Case has the freedom to both test and reinvent her working repertoire on the road--she had a clear idea of what she didn�t want to create.
�It�s a rip-off to buy a sprawling double-live-album full of songs you already have,� laughs Case, who co-produced Tigers and selected the song list from available tapes. �And really, a lot of �live� albums are largely enhanced in the studio--they�re heavily overdubbed, or people re-record weak vocals, or things are fixed in the mix. I didn�t want that. I wanted it to be something that actually happened in front of the audience; I wanted it to be as live a recording as possible, with the bleeding and the weird notes and everything preserved. Of course when we got into the mixing process, matching the best performances with the best recordings turned out to be a lot more difficult than I�d anticipated. There were times when I thought, �Oh man, why did I ever watch The Last Waltz and think this was going to be easy?� So in the end we did have to overdub one part--an acoustic guitar with a bad direct input--that just didn�t come through at all in the original tapes.�
The balance of Tigers, then, reflects what Neko�s audiences heard on those handfuls of evenings in Toronto and Chicago. And what they heard was music made by people who�ve shared stages and studios for so long that the music sounds both organic--in-the-moment, as it were--and aggressively rehearsed, as indeed these shows were. Represented on The Tigers Have Spoken are the Sadies, an impossibly fine quartet whose own albums are as excellent 60s-country rock/pyschedelia/C&W/surf/punk releases as you�ll ever hear; Jon Rauhouse, pedal steel journeyman whose work graces albums by Howe Gelb, Kelly Hogan, Sally Timms, Reubens Accomplice, and The Pine Valley Cosmonauts, in addition to those by Case; Carolyn Mark, Case�s collaborator in the duo project the Corn Sisters; Kelly Hogan, a world class singer in her own right; and Jim & Jennie and the Pinetops.
Even the album�s five covers indicate something of the range of styles and singers that have influenced Neko�s own music, swinging from girl-group homage to Nashville cool to ragged solo vocals. The Shangri-Las� �The Train From Kansas City� gets a chugging, full-throttle delivery, while �Soulful Shade of Blue� is as giddy a declaration of infatuation as it was in its original version. �Buffy Sainte-Marie was always a very big deal to me, even when I was young; I named my first dog after her when I was 5. She�s the writer of the greatest protest songs ever, she made her first record when she was 23, she�s this incredibly beautiful woman, and �Soulful Shade� was such a nice moment of joyous abandon for her.� Likewise, Loretta Lynn�s rip-it-to-shreds indictment of gender double-standards, �Rated X,� receives note-perfect treatment.
But Tigers� high points are Case�s own compositions--the throaty versions of �Blacklisted� and �Favorite� she turns in here, or the brand-new �If You Knew� and �The Tigers Have Spoken,� both written and performed with the Sadies. In fact it�s the simple, audible pleasure of making music--the interplay between Case and her fellow musicians--that serves as the prime element of The Tigers Have Spoken.
And speaking of that, The Tigers Have Spoken contains one moment of creative exchange that�s worth specific mention, the only cut not drawn from her tour shows. As an invited guest at last year�s ideaCity Conference--an aggressively cross-cultural exchange project that draws presenters from wildly diverse disciplines including art, technology, literature, folklore, and anthropology--Neko turned a conference panel into a field recording session.
�It makes me sad every time I realize that the value of art and music in our culture seems to be slipping away. Especially music, which is easily the most �used� and enjoyed form of art there is. It's everywhere, but sadly, your average person who enjoys it has no idea how it could enrich their lives to actually try it out. Our culture has long fostered the myth that the making of music and art is a sort of pipedream, something that�s beyond their ability--the myth that it's not art if it's not the symphony, or if you don't become a star making millions of dollars. So what I wanted to do was demonstrate how easy the creative process was, and how easily [the audience] could be a part of it.�
With friends Darryl Neudorf and Paul Morstad overseeing, Neko walked the assembled crowd of 300-odd conference goers through the chorus to the old standard �Wayfaring Stranger,� and recorded a stripped-down version of the song, right there in Toronto�s Isabel Bader Theatre. And then she played the music they�d helped create back to the audience, playing the raw track through the audio system she�d brought along. That recording--Neko Case and a cast of hundreds--appears as the rideout cut on The Tigers Have Spoken. In the context of the high-energy band settings that precede it, �Wayfaring Stranger� serves as a comparatively reserved, though no less collaborative coda.
And though the rest of the songs on the record were taped in rather less austere settings--the tiny halls, clubs, and smaller venues Neko�s been playing since college--the sentiment behind that recording of �Wayfaring Stranger� obtains throughout The Tigers Have Spoken. The creative process is hardly magical; but the end result can be, given the right company and combination of elements.
If you�ve seen Neko Case�s live show, you�ll know the treat you�re in for. If you haven�t, The Tigers Have Spoken will make quite an introduction.
