Neko Case specifically asked that no video from our zoom recording be used. She was running a bit behind; the singer-songwriter and guitarist had just wrapped garden labors, and despite freshening up before our meeting — we were scheduled to talk ahead of her tour stop to Emerson Colonial Theatre, to support her recent career-spanning compilation “Wild Creatures” — she didn’t feel quite camera ready. And honestly? That she was previously tending to earthen life was far from surprising. This is someone who loves nature.
Take the closing track from 2009’s “Middle Cyclone,” "Marais la Nuit." It translates to “Swamp at Night” or “Marsh at Night”, and runs a hefty 31 minutes and 39 seconds on CD and digital releases, and 15 minutes (an entire side) on vinyl. It’s a simple track, featuring the sounds of frogs at the pond on the artist’s Vermont property. Case made the field recording herself.
Case has lived in a lot of places, but that reverence and awe of the natural world has been there from the jump. “I spent a lot of time alone, especially as a little kid,” she recalled. “There were a lot of really rural places.” This was thanks in part to her stepfather’s line of work: archaeology. And so the young case found herself far away from cities and the density they offer — places like a farm in Vermont, the Colville Reservation in Washington State, a town outside of Eugene, Oregon. She’d visit her stepfather on digs in Semiahmoo Spit, or in the Hawaiian Islands. “There's something about the work of archeology that takes you out,” she emphasized. And now, with 25 years of a solo-career behind her, she’s back in Vermont, drinking in nature, recording the occasional frog.
But despite all the time spent outdoors and away from cities, it was a major urban area — Vancouver — that first served as a base for Case to develop as a musician. In 1997, the same year as her solo debut (“The Virginian,” recorded with Her Boyfriends) she co-formed The New Pornographers. And even though that’s a quarter-century of output, case doesn’t “think about my early career too much in regards to my solo work.”
For her, those early years were about learning how to play with others: she played drums in the band Cub and took the vocal reins in the trio Maow. The playing-in-multiple-bands-at-the-same-time situation was not unusual. The music scene in Vancouver was relatively small (she dubbed it “incestuous”) so it seemed everyone played with everyone else. And it was fantastic.
“We didn't have the American ‘sports idea’ of music,” explained Case, reminiscing about the non-competitive nature of local gigging. “It was more of a potluck because in the city of Vancouver, there would be like, five bass players to choose from. So if you were going to be in a band with somebody, you were going to have to just know that they were going to be in three other bands. And it was not a competition. It was like, ‘Well, you know, we’ve got to spread it around and make sure we have a good variety.’ And I'm really glad that I was able to kind of come up in that kind of environment. It was very good for me.”
“Wild Creatures” is a career retrospective spanning most of the albums in Case’s solo studio discography. The one exception is her debut album ”The Virginian,” none of its 12 tracks are represented on the album. The earliest songs on the compilation come from her sophomore solo effort, “Furnace Room Lullaby.”
That’s because “Furnace Room Lullaby” is the album where Case said she began to find her sound. The reason: it’s the first album on which we get to hear her play guitar.
“I have super tiny hands and I would never seem to make any progress on a six string guitar,” Case revealed. “And then I was recording with my friend Don Kerr at his studio — the Gas Station in Toronto — and he had a tenor guitar. I was like, ‘What is this? Is this a guitar? I've never seen one’. And he said, ‘Yeah, it's a four string guitar.’ I was just blown away; I played it the whole time I was there. And then I managed to find one, so I bought one and I was able to start writing songs by myself.”
So came an entirely new level of creative control and sonic exploration, and eventually a more personal sound. Notably, she doesn’t consider the journey as intentional as she does organic. The music came on in a torrent, which Case said cascaded into a kind of never-look-back moment: “I was running forward as fast as I could go, from one place to another and in life in general — and I was just so worried if I stopped, everything would go away,” she said. “So I just started playing my own songs on guitar. I was learning in front of everyone, basically.” That she had a history with the Toronto-based band The Sadies, further bolstered her musicianship. “I had a very good, sort of lyrical relationship with [recently deceased Sadies frontman singer and guitarist] Dallas Good. We understood our vernacular. We had a very specific kind of communication that really worked. And he had the same things in mind I did. I was very lucky to be able to work with him.”
Case — someone that didn’t go to conservatory; that picked up guitar late — has a decidedly unorthodox approach to sound. Learning these skills allows her to handle these musical idiosyncrasies with greater finesse. “It was exciting being in charge of my own phrasing, especially because I write a lot of things that don't necessarily follow good music theory etiquette,” she said. “Sometimes you're taught there are things you don't do and you feel that they're forbidden somehow, or kind of off-limits. But I don't really know what I'm doing, so I don't really have that [limitation].” She does acknowledge this puzzles some of her collaborators: “It kind of drives people crazy sometimes, it’s like ‘Why did you change time signatures that many times?’”
Case has been solo for a quarter century. Experience has made her better. Even still, calling “Wild Creatures” and the accompanying tour a “career retrospective” feels a little strange. Yes, this is a retrospective to this particular point in time, but the word still carries with it a connotation of finality. This couldn’t be farther from the truth; her search for sound isn’t ending. The New Pornographers are working on a new album. She’s got Angel Olsen’s 2022 album “Big Time” on repeat. She’s at last getting into the former Manchester-supernova, Oasis.
And for all of it looking back, “Wild Creatures “does contain one new song: the elegiac lullaby “Oh, Shadowless.” Midway through, bassist Joey Burns introduces a horrific, roaring drone, which is a digital sound artifact Case found on Youtube, a clip of a woman spinning a dirt bike in a circle. The sounds are all around. It takes a particular intention to notice them, and a certain brand of artistic derring-do to make something of them. Case still has both in no short supply.
Neko Case: WIld Creatures Tour with Sean Rowe, Emerson Colonial Theatre, 8:00 p.m., September 7, 2022
