Neko Case released her 4th solo studio album a few months ago called The Worse Things Get, The Harder I fight, The Harder I fight, The More I Love You. It's awesome. It's great that she is finally really able to insert herself into her lyrics. Her artistic evolution is clear throughout the 4 albums, and I feel lucky to have experienced it practically as it occurred. She's the only artist I've seen in concert over four times. I "discovered" her on David Dye's World Cafe when her second solo album "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" came out. She performed live on the show and I was pretty much hooked. I started covering her songs on my guitar and singing them at the occasional gig or random singing event. She has the ability to create intricate, beautiful melodies you didn't think were possible, and I am nothing if not a melody junkie. She also has one of the best voices in rock/pop/country whatever your genre, she's got it. She laughingly says that she wishes she had a tremolo. I hope she's joking because I'm seriously sick of girl singers who overuse their tremolos like their lives depended on it. Someone told me to check out the artist Lorde and I finally got around to it recently. Perhaps I didn't give her much of a chance but when I heard her voice all I could think was again? Another non-descript tremolo chick? I don't want to sound like an old curmudgeony grandfather, but I'm having a hard time connecting with today's music. This might be partly due to the fact that I don't dedicate the time I once did to the discovery of music. When I was a teenager, most of my free time was spent in a record store, it gave me intense pleasure to build my music library one tape then one CD at a time, and admittedly, my relative vast knowledge of music comes from that era of my life.
It's not all grim. I do dig other contemporaries like Cat Power, The Punch Brothers, Ray LaMontagne, Lady Gaga, Amos Lee, Adele sometimes, Beth Orton (is she contemporary), The National, Jason Mraz (his live stuff's amazing, his studio stuff doesn't hold a candle to it), The Darkness (are they contemporaries), that one Kings of Leon album, a couple of Black Keys songs; but no one, besides Neko, has really changed my life these days, and that's basically what I want from my music. I'm demanding, I know.
I went to her concert at Radio City this past September, which to be honest, was just ok. Not sure she was feeling the venue, or maybe I've seen her in concert too much. My bf, who likes her fine but not as much as me, and I got into a discussion about her. I was asking why Neko was not more famous. I know that she's got plenty of devoted fans, I know she makes a living off her music which in and of itself is awesome, but in my opinion, her songs are commercial enough to reach a wider audience. After all, she has the greatest gift of all: the gift of melody. But in his view, her music attracts an audience limited to the hipster Brooklyn type we all despise. He feels she is just ok and unoffensive. I guess that's the thing with music, it affects the most primal part of ourselves, so while there is certainly a lowest common denominator in what humans like, our physical and emotional compositions must be different enough that we respond differently to certain sounds. Sometimes critics make me laugh. They speak universally as if their opinion should be shared by all, but they should caveat their critiques and tell us who they are as people before telling me what I'm supposed to like.
Anyway, my issue is that while Case works so hard to make her music awesome, somehow she's not getting the attention she should from some of the big name artists that she could potentially collaborate with. Where is Jack White when you need him, huh? Off gallivanting with Loretta Lynn perhaps? Maybe she doesn't want that kind of attention, but to me it's a shame. She should be up there with the Loretta Lynns, Patsy Clines and Laura Nyros of the world. So I just hope that she becomes one of those people, sort of like Bonnie Raitt, who will sweep the Grammys when she's 50. She'd certainly deserve it.
I'm a dying breed
Who still believes
Haunted by American dreams.
