A Case Of Neko

I picked up Neko Case's latest CD, Blacklisted over the weekend, and so far it sounds pretty damn good. This time around Neko's taken on the bulk of the songwriting and plays several instruments, including guitar and drums. I think she learned to play the guitar in the last several years so she could write songs with it, and if that's the case, the proof is in the puddin'.

She's always had a great voice, but this set of songs makes me wish that she'd begun writing songs long before this. I'll qualify that by saying that I've only listened to it a few times, but I get the feeling I'm a-gonna just keep on liking it more and more. There's a great song called "Deep Red Bells", which has a Johnny-Cash-meets-David-Lynch thing goin' on, and another called "I Wish I Was The Moon", which is a wonderful expression of loneliness. So many great songs are built around the clear expression of one concept/idea/thought/feeling. Imagine, being so lonely that you would rather be the moon (surely the Maytag repairman of cellestial orbs). There's also a very nice cover of "Running Out Of Fools".

When I got home, I received an email from my friend Didi in Chicago (Neko's home base these days). I get a kick out of Didi. She tosses off the following as a casual aside in her email: "Oh yeah, Neko Case had a garage sale last week. She had some wacky stuff but I only ended up getting a few things. Beer was served, so its hard to imagine much profit!"

I have yet to receive a response to my reply, which went something like this: "What did you get?! What wacky stuff?! Tell me tell me tell me!" Stay tuned.

Didi is the centre of all musical coincidences (Chicago Chapter, est. 1997). One of the first CD reviews I ever wrote for Chart was for Liz Phair's Whitechocolatespaceegg, in which I utilized a confectionery analogy, something like "hard and crunchy outside, sweet and soft inside. Mmmmm." Turns out that Didi's family doctor is Liz's father. Doc Phair, Didi calls him. So D gives a copy of my review to the good Phair doctor, and he apparently said he'd pass it on to Liz. Only thing is, I learned afterwards that the title of the CD came to Liz when she first saw her son's head just after his birth. And here I am comparing her infant son's head to a yummy chocolate! Yeah, can't wait to run into her. "So you're the guy who wants to eat my son's head!" Bang!

Also, after I had turned Didi into a Rheostatics fan, she happened to end up in the same elevator as the band when they were in Chicago a few years ago. She apparently cornered Tim Vesley in the elevator and railed on for a while about how "Claire" is the greatest song ever written, etc. Poor Tim. I imagine those guys assumed they had a cloak of obscurity with them in Chicago, and all of a sudden they're trapped in an elevator with a crazy red-head ranting about "Claire".

There's some way to wrap this all up with something about "Life isn't Phair..." or "Claire de la lune" or something, and maybe if I worked on it for an hour, something would come to me, but I gotta go to bed, so I'll leave you to you own devices.