LIVE REVIEW: Neko Case in Lexington, MA (10.15.26)
Currently performing an intimate venue run throughout the country, Neko Case kicked off her current tour at a sold-out Cary Hall in Lexington, Mass., on October 15. Case is a powerful vocalist and intriguing performer, leaving the quietly appreciative crowd enthralled throughout the 90-minute set. Her tour, which continues to support last year’s stunning Neon Grey Midnight Green, concludes on November 12 in Washington.
The set opened with a rocking “Bracing for Sunday” from 2013’s The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You.” She played 22 songs, including six from Neon Grey Midnight Green (her 8th solo album), three from 2009’s Middle Cyclone, and four from Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. In her twenty-five-year career, the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter has written numerous indie-rock and country-noir masterpieces. Case is an impactful songwriter who writes potent songs about our connection with the natural world and animals, plus themes of death and mortality. These themes elicit strong emotions and thoughts.
She introduced “People Got a Lotta Nerve” as a “song about a whale or a few whales”–with that powerful and catchy chorus – “I’m a maneater…” and the pensive, beautiful “Little Gears” as “a song about a spider.” Another song in the set, “Oh, Shadowless,” is about putting a pet to sleep and “wondering what they are thinking.” She introduced the haunting, mesmerizing “Louise” as “a love song which I barely write about humans.” The set did include her other love song about humans– the gentle, thoughtful “That Teenage Feeling.” Her popular song, “This Tornado Loves You,” written from the POV of the tornado, sounded sublime and resonated through the venue. It’s been in my head since the show, which isn’t a bad thing.
Case has been quite busy with last year’s album release, writing the music and lyrics for a stage musical adaptation of Thelma & Louise (this had a limited fall run in London), as well as her memoir, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You. I snagged it from the library a few days after the show and am in the middle of reading it. She writes: “As long as I can remember, I have loved music. A huge cliché for a musician’s story, I know, but I had no idea how crazy I was about it even as it was burning me down. I listened to it as much as possible; it filled every nook and cranny of my life, and nothing fun was worth doing if there wasn’t music being played in the background. It was important in a way I couldn’t see, let alone acknowledge.”
“I’m a little bit hoarse today,” Case shared. “I drove here from home. All the colors were out, and I was singing along to the radio.” She also got pulled over by the police for speeding over 100 mph. Home is Vermont. She’s also lived in Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Canada. She met tour opener Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer, in Canada, and they were in The New Pornographers together. She brought him out during the encore to play the fantastic, fun New Pornographers song, “Myriad Harbour,” and introduced him by saying: “Canada is one of the biggest countries with one of the smallest populations. If you’re in a band with someone, they’re in three other bands.” The gorgeous and vast “I Wish I Were the Moon” opened the four-song encore. She started it acapella and then the band kicked in. Case said it’s a song she wrote about her dad which ended up in a “vampire TV show F– scene.” That show was True Blood, and the scene featured the consistently sexy Alexander Skarsgård. Case left the audience with this final encouragement: “You’re super smart and capable, and we outnumber the Nazis.”
Get out there and vote today!
