Darkness And Light On Neko Case's Blacklisted

Neko Case wants you to know what her new album, the brooding, atmospheric Blacklisted, is all about ... kind of. "If I were to tell you that the mood of the album is about homesickness and feeling lost, that doesn't give it all away," singer/ songwriter Case said during a recent interview. "It's kind of the artist's responsibility to be careful about [not giving away too much] I guess. You should leave something to people's imagination."

The dark imagery and unusual, sometimes creepy instrumentation on Blacklisted, due out Aug. 20 on Bloodshot Records, will be sure to have many imaginations running wild with notions of deserted towns and unlit skies. With her third full-length, the 31-year-old Virginia native and member of the indie-pop group the New Pornographers — "We are currently recording an album," she said — has released her most cohesive album to date. Her signature booming, country/gospel voice is in fine form throughout as she's backed by such friends as Dallas Good of The Sadies, Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico, Kelly Hogan and Mary Margaret O'Hara, and Howe Gelb of Giant Sand. The 14-song album was recorded at Wavelab Studio in Tucson, Ariz., at the end of 2001. Case played guitar, tenor guitar, piano, saw and drums and co-produced with Darryl Neudorf and Craig Schumacher.

Case's solo albums — she's released two others, 1997's The Virginian and 2000's Furnace Room Lullaby — mix folk, rock and country, but the singer is inspired most by gospel music. "Not because I'm religious, but because I love music when people are passionate and sincere," she said. "You can really feel it then. I try to bring that passion to my own music. I can't imitate someone like Bessie Griffin, but I hope some of the spirit is there."

On Furnace Room Lullaby, Case co-wrote all but one song with her various collaborators, but, on Blacklisted, she wrote most of the songs on her own. "I just did it," Case said bluntly. "I had a bunch of songs, so it seemed right to put them on the album. I couldn't play guitar on [Furnace Room Lullaby] but now that I can play guitar it was the natural, easy thing to do."

Case said she'd wanted to play guitar for some time. "I had always tried to play guitar but my hands were so small I couldn't make much progress," she confessed. "Then a friend of mine had a tenor guitar which only had four strings. And I was like 'Wow, the guitar of my dreams, I can fit my hand around the neck.' So I got one and started to play.

"It's like training wheels," Case continued. "Not to say that the tenor guitar is anything less than the six-string guitar. It's a very different-sounding instrument; it's much more dulcimer-like and it was built for people who play banjo. And now that I've been playing the tenor so long I can actually play the six-string pretty well ... or at least as well as I can play [the tenor]."

There are two covers on Blacklisted: "Running Out of Fools," made famous by Aretha Franklin, and "Look For Me (I'll Be Around)" (Sarah Vaughn recorded it in 1963). "It's impossible to sing like Aretha Franklin, so you have to do things your own way," Case said. "So even if I wanted to sound like Aretha Franklin, there's no way in hell that I'm going to."

Case started playing in bands when she was about 17, although, she pointed out, "I did sing all around the house when I was a kid." After a stint drumming for the Vancouver, B.C., pop-punk band Maow, Case began to start playing the style of alternative country music that is found on her solo material. "It was a natural progression," Case said of her musical transition. "Punk rock didn't have a lot to offer [anymore]. And even when I was a teenager, I still really loved country music."

An art school graduate, Case said her education is "really important" to her music. "It prepares you for being more self-examined so that you can be self-motivated and get things done," she explained. "It prepares you to figure out what your work ethic is."

Blacklisted retains a shadowy mood throughout, filled with murky shades of purple and black. "Right before [recording] the album, I listened to the Neil Young soundtrack to [the Jarmusch-directed 1996 film] 'Dead Man' a million times."

Blacklisted's bleak soundscapes are often complemented by mysterious, compelling lyrics. "It's half fiction and half personal experience," Case said. "You don't want to make things overly specific," she continued. "I know when I listen to records there may be a song I really love, and they're generally kind of timeless things that don't spell things out for you, and then if I hear the author say exactly what's it's about I feel really disappointed. You want your listener to be able to have the chance to be creative themselves and then they form their own bond with the songs if they really like them, and the songs are more personal to them that way."

Case did reveal a few details about her lyrics. On the first track, "Things That Scare Me," she sings "Hunted by American dreams." "It's pretty terrifying," Case explained. "It seems kind of greedy and starving to me, so I am scared by it."

But Blacklisted isn't all downbeat. "A lot of people say the album sounds depressed," Case said. "But once you get to the point that you can say what depresses you, there's a hopefulness, and that's the whole point of saying it: Because maybe it's out there speaking to other people feeling the same way." — Ryan Dombal [Monday, Aug. 19, 2002]