NEKO CASE Signs with Anti-;
Full Band Live Album to be Released This Fall
Anti- will release Neko Case's new live album, The Tigers Have Spoken on November 9 in a licensing deal with Mint Records for the world outside of Canada. Recorded over 7 nights and at 3 different venues in Chicago and Toronto, the album finds Neko backed by a full band featuring the Sadies and steel guitar whiz Jon Rauhouse and special guests Kelly Hogan, Carolyn Mark, Jim & Jennie and the Pinetops, Paul Morstad and Brian Connelly.
While Tigers is a live album, it is not your typical career retrospective — only two of the eleven songs are from Neko's back catalog. In addition to two new original compositions Neko wraps her powerful pipes around a surprising collection of covers written by artists like Buffy Saint Marie, Loretta Lynn, the Shangri-La’s and Freakwater’s Catherine Irwin. The set closes with impassioned versions of the standards, "Wayfaring Stranger" and "This Little Light", which Neko makes forever her own.
Neko Case has been making a name for herself over the past few years in both indie-rock and country circles as a solo artist and as a member of the New Pornographers. Her majestic-yet-sublime singing voice, her poetic songwriting and her musical vision– which reconstructs a century’s worth of American music has won her acclaim from all quarters.
Writing of her previous solo work, Spin Magazine’s Alex Pappademas said “...she treats Americana like a wellspring of weirdness, not a retro refuge...” and in Rolling Stone, Neva Chonin called her sound “…country so cool it shivers.”
In addition to The Tigers Have Spoken, Neko is completing a deal with Anti- for her next studio album, the follow-up to the highly acclaimed Blacklisted, due out in the Spring of 2005. Neko will also perform at the 2004 Austin City Limits Festival in Austin, TX on Friday, September 17th with bassist Tom V. Ray and multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhouse.
Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken
denotes new, original composition
1. *If You Knew
2. Soulful Shade of Blue
3. Hex
4. Train From Kansas City
5. *The Tigers Have Spoken
6. Blacklisted
7. Loretta
8. Favorite
9. Rated X
10. This Little Light
11. Wayfaring Stranger
― jonesboys, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 17:24 (nineteen years ago) link
four months pass...
I dunno. I am really underwhelmed. After four times through, only Train From KC really sticks in the mind, and 3-4 other songs come across well, and the playing is tight and organic, but it all feels pretty pointless. The title song . . . not good. Case's material is only sporadically up to the quality of her voice, and it generally isn't here. I like the last two tracks a lot because in the context of songs that are familiar and classic you can really hear what she is doing and what she brings to the table. But she should do that with something more than "This Little Light of Mine".
Case is such a puzzlement. In theory, she's just what I love. I respect her voice, her aesthetic, and her work ethic. I really want her to succeed. But she has never quite made herself into an artist I can't live without.
― Vornado (Vornado), Tuesday, 21 December 2004 21:24 (nineteen years ago) link