Welcome back to the Odyssey – let’s get to the music!
Disc 1569 is…. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Artist: Neko Case
Year of Release: 2006
What’s up with the Cover? A deer lady (yes, that kind of deer – look at her legs) is having a stern talk with a pack of foxes. I suspect it relates to the head of her friend she’s cradling in one arm.
The foxes’ expressions suggest it won’t be difficult to wrangle a confession out of them. If anything the one behind her looks to be ready to skip further dialogue and add another deer lady head to the collection in short order.
How I Came To Know It: I’ve liked Neko Case a long time, but the reason why is lost in the mists of time. I think I heard a song from around this era (the first album of hers I purchased was 2009’s Middle Cyclone). This one was next, as I began my oft-employed system of drilling into an artist’s back catalogue.
How It Stacks Up: I have nine Neko Case albums. “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” is tied for #1 with the “The Virginian.” I originally gave the latter the edge, but I must revisit this hasty decision and put “Fox Confessor…” out front. It would have taken a perfect record to manage that feat, but…here we are.
Ratings: 5 stars
While Middle Cyclone was the album that first caught my attention, it was “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” that made me realize just what a treasure I had unearthed in Neko Case. This record is a modern classic.
If you seek to define “Fox Confessor…” you’ll find the effort is in vain. Case blends country, folk, pop, and old-time church music together into a genre-defying swoon. The unifying factor is her innovative approach to songwriting and a voice as big and brassy as a steeple bell.
On her first three albums, Case lends her vocals to alt-folk and country, and these albums are all great – some of her best in fact. But on “Fox Confessor” she takes new paths in her approach to music, experimenting fearlessly through genres, delivery, production and arrangement. Despite all these shifts in approach, the songs have a common soul to them that makes the record feel united in something. It is hard to say what that something is, but Case’s approach makes it feel important.
The album opens with “Margaret vs. Pauline” a song that is loosely based on Richard Brautigan’s bizarre novel, “In Watermelon Sugar.” I liked “In Watermelon Sugar” well enough but it never connected with me emotionally. Case takes the story of a couple of those characters and grounds them in their tragedy with a series of deft lines that land with deliberate purpose. The different fates of our two titular characters ultimately summed up with a stark and simple set of images:
“Two girls ride the
blue line
Two girls walk down the same street
One left her sweater sittin' on the train
The other lost three fingers at the cannery”
That song is immediately followed on by “Star Witness” which is the best on the record, mixing Case’s bold power through each stanza, matched with a light lilt in the chorus that feels like that breathless moment in a Viennese Waltz when the dancers start gliding across the floor. Yeah, I’ve been watching a bit of So You Think You Can Dance.
The second half of the record isn’t as full of immediately accessible singles as the first, but it is just as powerful as it explores multiple facets of Case’s style and imagination. She is a jubilant southern preacher on “John Saw That Number,” tells a dark and deadly fairy tale on “Dirty Knife” and then wraps herself up in a Patsy Cline-like croon on “Lion’s Jaws”. Every song is different than the last, every one dripping with first rate poetry, brought to life by Case’s vocal prowess.
With all those great lyrics, it was disappointing that the CD’s booklet was just a collection of art projects and photos. If you’re going to go to the trouble of giving me a booklet, putting the lyrics in there is the decent thing to do.
However, that’s my only criticism of a record that is brilliant at every turn. I’ve heard “Fox Confessor…” countless times over the years, and not only do I never grow tired of it, it reveals some new and wonderful beauty to me each time I put it on.
Best tracks: all tracks
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