Jason Creps

When The Wind Blows | Vocal tornado Neko Case rides the whirlwind into this year’s Folk Fest.

DETAILS

Edmonton Folk Music Festival
Gallagher Park
Thursday, August 6 - Sunday, August 9

More in: Live Music

NEKO CASE
Edmonton Folk Music Festival, Gallagher Park. Songcatchers session: Stage 6, Fri, Aug 7 (7:30pm) • Concert: Main Stage, Fri, Aug 7 (9pm)

Virginia-born Neko Case is perhaps best known as a member of the power pop collective The New Pornographers, where her powerhouse vocals push every song she appears on into pure exuberance. On tracks like “Mass Romantic” and “The Laws Have Changed,” Case comes off like a sonic bazooka, loud but clarion-pure, her infectious harmonies often outshining the band’s formidable lead vocalist, Carl Newman. She seems like the ultimate secret weapon, to be deployed whenever you want to send the audience into mass hysterics.

But as joyous as she is in realm of indie pop, Case and her myriad talents only fully reveal themselves in her solo work as a country/folk singer. It’s here that she scales back the sheer volume of her voice in favour of dusty atmospherics and a style of storytelling that manages to be stark, tragic, and tender all at once. Case’s original material only improves with every recording, and she also has a knack for picking covers: one of the standout tracks on her newest album, Middle Cyclone, released earlier this year, is a piano-drenched take on Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me,” with faltering, intimate vocals to match.

If Case’s voice isn’t everything to everyone, it’s got to be pretty close. She performs with her backing band on the Folk Fest mainstage this Friday evening; last week she spoke to SEE Magazine by telephone.

SEE Magazine: Your new album, Middle Cyclone, is full of animal and nature imagery, which you’ve written about for many years. But on the cover you’re crouched on the hood of a muscle car, wielding a sword. Where did you get that idea?

Neko Case: I just wanted a picture that would be fun to take. Basically, I tried to think of it as “What would I do if I had my way, and if I was an eight-year-old boy?” I’d want (a) a muscle car — I grew up in the 1970s — and (b) a sword.

SEE: The lead song on the record is told from the perspective of a lovesick tornado, that can only show its love is by destroying things. The first time I heard it, I think I laughed out loud, but increasingly I find it tragic — it’s part Romeo and Juliet, part King Midas.

NC: The poor tornado can’t help itself, y’know? It’s a tornado — what’s it going to do? I had a dream with that story in it, and I thought it was interesting. What would you do if you were a tornado in love? It’d probably be pretty difficult to love properly and appropriately. [Laughs.]

SEE: Does writing from these other perspectives — animals, weather systems — come somewhat naturally to you?

NC: I think I naturally gravitate toward nature. It’s kind of a preoccupation of mine, definitely. That’s what I’m interested in esthetically, and it’s where I like to spend my time — though I’m the same amount of an urban person as well. I like fairytales and things of that nature. Plus, I grew up with lots of animals. I’m from a farming family.

SEE: I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t ask about your voice. What other singers did you admire or try to emulate when you were developing your own sound?

NC: I definitely gravitated toward the bigger voices. I really like gospel singers a lot, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and whatnot. I didn’t start out with much dynamic — I was on 10 all the time, because I was scared. I’ve been actually trying to get quieter over the years.

SEE: Do you see the results there that you’d hoped for?

NC: I’ve calmed down a bit. I’m less scared. I feel like there’s more dynamic than there used to be, for sure. I mean, I’m not anywhere near where I’d like to be, and I’m not in league with those singers that I mentioned at all, but maybe someday. If I keep trying really hard. [Laughs.]

SEE: Something that I think often gets overlooked in discussions of your music are your lyrics, which I really admire. They’re very evocative, and very precise. How long do you typically spend fine-tuning them?

NC: It really depends. Some songs write themselves really fast — like “Margaret Vs. Pauline” [from 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood] I wrote really fast. It seems to me now like a complicated song, but I was excited on the idea. And then songs like “Star Witness,” or — I’m trying to think of an example off the new record that took a long time — “Prison Girls.” I don’t really force myself to do things, because it seems kind of not fun. I think your subconscious does better when you’re not poking at it with a stick.

SEE: While recording Middle Cyclone, you picked up as many free pianos as you could off of Craigslist and filled a barn with them. A year or so later, does that still seem like a good idea? Will you keep them around for the foreseeable future, or have they become clutter?

NC: No, I mean, it’s a giant hay barn with no hay in it, so they’re not really causing any problems. They’re not going to do very well in the barn if I keep them in there, so when the house is finished — it’s being remodelled — I’ll move some of them inside, probably, and some I’ll give away. Some of them aren’t fixable, so I thought maybe I could make some kind of art with them outside in the field. Have a tree grow out of a piano. That might look nice.

SEE: Have any animals taken up nests in them?

NC: Not that I’ve noticed. There’s a robin’s nest right above one of them, which you can actually hear in one of the songs on the record. [Laughs.] But I haven’t noticed anything inside.

SEE: Only the pleasant kind of infestation.

NC: I hope so. If there’s anything inside, my cats will find it, I’m sure.

SEE: Before getting started in music, you moved to Vancouver to attend the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, which is something of an exclusive school. What did you study there?

NC: I did mostly printmaking and photography. I thought I was going there to become a painter, but I only made one painting the whole time I was there.

SEE: What kinds of subjects did you focus on?

NC: I wasn’t really focusing on a subject. It was more learning how to work, and how to be disciplined, and asking yourself the right questions in the creative process. I didn’t really make anything noteworthy while I was there, I don’t think. I just wanted to learn how to use the machines, and take the knowledge and be able to turn myself into a working artist — which I never did. I ended up being a musician. The processes are the same, so it was very helpful in the end.

SEE: You’ve done some voice work for the Adult Swim cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and at one time you were attached to a project with one of the show’s creators called — and I’m going to run this title past you to make sure I have it right — Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge.

NC: That’s the title! There’s a pilot finished. I don’t know what’s going on with the rest of it.

SEE: What did you do for it?

NC: I played the role of Cheyenne Cinnamon, who is a teenage pop star/superhero. It was pretty fun. Pretty dark.

SEE: What are her superpowers?

NC: Flying on her magic unicorn. She likes cocaine a lot, too. [Laughs.] I don’t really know if she has superpowers — she can go in and see other people, what they’re doing, but I don’t actually know what her superpowers are. I know she has a magic flying unicorn named Ulysses, who’s a major coke fiend.