Best Songs of 2013 – #19
On her latest solo album, the annoyingly titled The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, Neko Case delivers another batch of her signature smoky indie blues songs.
Today’s SOTD is one of the simplest, and the one that has stuck with me the most.
Neko Case epitomizes the need to hear an album multiple times before rendering a verdict. Her records are dense and nuanced… they sneak up on you and sometimes risk passing you by.
Case’s 2006 album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood remains her best work, and the epitome of her earthy alternative style. That album is so good that it’s hard not to compare her subsequent records to it, to their detriment.
That’s not really fair to the new work, but I guess that’s the curse of success.
#7 – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood – Neko Case
2006 was a strong year, placing four titles in this top ten list. Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood placed fourth at the time and the seven years since have seen it rise up a notch.
More than any record on this list, Fox Confessor typifies the idea of an album as a unified statement, not just a collection of songs.
Now here’s a song that I’d never heard before discovering it through this cover version. ‘Don’t Forget Me’ was originally written and recorded by Harry Nilsson for his 1974 album Pussy Cats.
That album was produced by John Lennon and features a wild cover of Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ as well as gentler fare like this. Apparently Nilsson and Lennon’s hard partying carried over into the studio and resulted in a wild, half-genius, half-WTF album.
Nilsson even ruptured a vocal cord during the sessions but kept it to himself, and you can hear his voice getting progressively more harsh through the record.
Top Ten Female Vocalists – #3 – Neko Case
As I pointed out last week, four of the ten women on my list of favorite vocalists have ties to the country genre (here’s number three). And I was a fan of three of them even before my Brad Paisley-inspired entrance into country music fandom.
I suspect that’s more than a coincidence… I surmised earlier that country music tends to leave a little more room, sonically, for vocals. But maybe there’s a directness and emotional honesty in those songs that makes the voices more appealing.
Meet Me In Montauk 