Neko Case's voice is an instrument of such magnificent power that it's sometimes hard not to suspect that it might be, at least in part, a construct of the same studio magic that glosses her albums to a reverb-soaked sheen. In concert, though, Case puts those doubts to rest, summoning that same honey-coated, steel-plated wail from her tiny frame. That a voice this remarkable should also belong to such a singular songwriter is one of music's happiest coincidences.
Case's Saturday performance at the Riverside Theater highlighted plenty of tracks that could be staples of the American songbook, were it not for their uneasy, sometimes misanthropic bend. Case has long cast herself as the lonely recluse for whom love exists only in memories, but with each album she's pulled further and further from her fellow humans, singing of them with overarching mistrust.
Wildlife, on the other hand, she romanticizes. On the title track to her 2004 live album The Tigers Have Spoken, she sympathizes with a caged tiger who, nearing execution, dreams of the woman who bottle-fed him as a cub, the only fond memory from his wasted life. Case further aligned herself with the animals on this year's Middle Cyclone, at one point relishing a man's comeuppance when a whale crushes him. "You know they call them killer whales, but you seem surprised," she sings on a revenge fantasy called "People Got a Lotta Nerve."
Case was flanked Saturday by her silent band and her chatty longtime backup Kelly Hogan, who did most of the talking for Case, fielding the audience's polite hoots and hollers and giving introductions like, "This is a song about a bird," or, "This song's about tigers." Behind the band a projection displayed sometimes-literal animations of these deer, foxes and tigers, on a screen hugged by a painting of an owl with glowing yellow eyes.
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Photo by CJ Foeckler
