Neko Case

Imagine Miss Patsy Cline singing "Hey pretty baby/Get high with me," amidst other lyrical updates on a hardscrabble lady's life, with a booming yet angelic voice that can blast the leaves from the rain gutters -- well, that's Neko. Her fourth studio LP continues to prove her might as the reigning queen of neo-torch and twang.

Neko Case turned up forty years or so too late to be one of the great country voices of the
Fifties -- hearts break whenever she hits one of those seraphic high notes. The songs on
her fourth studio album, though, are vastly weirder than her precursors': You'll find
evocative story fragments about profound alienation written in the dense language of
contemporary poetry ("the sledge of tectonic fever"); chorusless rambles with o... More >