Neko Case - Blacklisted
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CD Details
Artist: Neko CaseEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2002-08-20
Music Label: Bloodshot Records
Soundtracks:
- Things That Scare Me
- Deep Red Bells
- Outro With Bees
- Lady Pilot
- Tightly
- Look For Me (I'll Be Around)
- Stinging Velvet
- Pretty Girls
- I Missed The Point
- Blacklisted
- I Wish I Was The Moon
- Runnin' Out Of Fools
- Ghost Wiring
Music reviews of Blacklisted
Music Review: the top of my list (best CD of 2002)
Rating: 5 Stars
Any time I put this CD in the stereo, it stays for weeks. Any CD by Neko Case, really. It takes hold of my life and I'm unable to listen to anything else until I've gotten it out of my system for the hundredth time. But this one especially. With backing from such alt-folk/country luminaries as Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino, the Sadies' Dallas Good, and Giant Sand man Howe Gelb, there's just something special about Blacklisted.
Building on the twangy country-pop of her second album, Furnace Room Lullaby, Blacklisted is more complex and soulful, with more inscrutable lyrics. Opening with the words, "florescent lights engage black birds, fryin' on a wire; same birds that followed me to school when I was young," and Jon Rauhaus' banjo picking stirring up images of Deliverance, the opening track, "Things That Scare Me," introduces a thread of anxiety into the country-folk stew. "Deep Red Bells" ups the anxiety quotient with lyrical imagery of highway deaths causing untold emotional damage, and Dallas Good's eerie, loping guitar lines. Neko's canyon-filling voice has never been bigger. "Lady Pilot" hints at airplane crashes, and the title track spins a lyrical metaphor of Neko's desire for escape - "fast train," she cries over Dallas Good's darkly twanging guitar, "where do your passengers wait? What's at the heart of your engine's rage?"
Not every Neko metaphor is so easily understood. "Red wine is fast at the lip of your glass, and I'm gonna ruin everything," she coos over Howe Gelb's saloon piano tinkling on "Outro With Bees." It sounds like Neko's the scorned mistress, but lasting only a minute, 30 seconds, it's hard to tell what she means by the song. Another shorty (barely 2 minutes) is the lilting, Patsy Cline-ish "Tightly," with such inscrutable lyrics as "When I'm walking under trees, I'm free to covet all I please; new moon's in the alley and it's madness." I'd love to hear another verse or two, as I would of the swinging country two-step, "Stinging Velvet" (just under 3 minutes), but on this record, Neko seems to be practicing her ability to say and play what she wants in a shorter amount of time.
She makes up for it in a big way with her cover of "Runnin' Out of Fools," the one Aretha had a hit with. Neko slinks around the verses and wails on every high note with perfect pitch. I've seen her do it live and can attest to the chills she never fails to produce every time she sings this song. Her other cover, the classic "Look For Me (I'll Be Around)" showcases another slinky vocal performance and Joey Burns' cool touch on the vibes. Not to mention, it has some of my favorite lyrics about girls who wait in the wings.
Neko has her own message for women, too. "Pretty Girls" is her cautionary tale for...well, pretty girls, a song Loretta Lynn might have written had she grown up contending with modern standards of beauty. With lyrics like "wind your flimsy blue gowns tight around you, around curves so comely and sinister; they blame it on you pretty girls," Neko's caring advice seems to mask a touch of venom. "I Wish I Was the Moon," a lilting tearjerker featuring Joey Burns' subtle accordion and Jon Rauhaus' weeping pedal steel, seems to express Neko's weariness of the dating game. But her wry humor hasn't left her, as she openly states, "How will you know when you've found me at last? I'll be the one with my heart in my lap."
Blacklisted comes full circle with the `60s-influenced album closer, "Ghost Wiring," like Patsy or Loretta hanging out with The Animals in the studio. Images of schoolgirl anxiety introduced on "Things That Scare Me" return ("wet shoes drag you off to school, shoes that never dry; crows curse and beat their wings"). And Neko scores a major coup, convincing reclusive Canadian singer Mary Margaret O'Hara to join her in the studio and sing a few lines in her eerie, quavery voice. Being a true lover of so many styles of great music, its no surprise Neko crafted Blacklisted with loving care. She must have a thing for lying down in album photos, though. She's tucked under the bumper of her moving van on the cover, and flopped out with some deer and hay on the back. Inscrutable as always, but deeply engrossing nonetheless.
Description of Blacklisted
Her third CD, is a lush, haunting showcase for her formidable vocal talents, as well as an intensely intimate work that evokes a dark elegance with a hint of twang. Bloodshot Records. 2002.Neko Case's third solo effort is a moody, atmospheric affair that both satisfies and mystifies. Recorded in Tucson with a stellar band that includes Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino, Blacklisted charms you with its haunting, reverb-soaked songs, most of which were written by Case herself. The lyrics are impressionistic and, at times, inscrutable. "Fast train, where do your passengers wait?" she sings in the title song. "What's at the heart of your engine's rage?" While it's not always clear what Case is getting at, the overall mood of the album is one of loss and melancholy. Soaring above it all is Case's remarkable Patsy Cline-meets-Judy Garland voice, which she uses to great effect on the album's two torchy cover songs: Sarah Vaughan's "Look for Me (I'll Be Around)" and Aretha Franklin's "Running Out of Fools." --David Hill
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