Her vocals run as clear as glacier water and her lyrics are as transparent as a tell-all memoir, but when Neko Case isn't singing beautifully about depressive scenarios and an often unhappy childhood, she's absolutely hilarious. Not only in her off-the-cuff onstage banter with her longtime band members, but also via her Twitter account, which offers a peek into her in-the-moment lifestyle (as she only does interviews every couple of tours or so).
Tweeting multiple times a day, these golden nuggets of 140 characters or less make you wonder what's really going on in her mind. Here are some prime examples from this year.
@NekoCase says:
April 11: "Hippy street drummers! Your stamina offends me!"
April 8: "When I want to feel young again I just eat myself sick on candy. It's cheap."
April 8: "Clip-on hand sanitizer is the new Buck knife."
April 5: "What this world NEEDS is a lot more of me looking at my blackheads in a hotel magnifying mirror."
March 28: "If you are ever feeling like offing yourself, just remember: there are blueberries, and we have the technology to freeze them."
March 11: "I'm sweary tonight. I need to lie down ..."
March 10: "#1 thing I DON'T miss about the PNW: Cedar bark chips and their micro-sliver splinter dust."
Jan. 28: "If someone's mullet is TOO crazy, are you allowed to cut it for them while they sleep?"
Her zany Twitter account thoughts can easily be viewed; come Monday, you can catch the Americana singer-songwriter in the flesh for an intimate-feeling Bing Crosby Theater show. Kicking off a quick-run tour earlier this week, Case — who allegedly has a penchant for the Baby Bar and once interviewed Sherman Alexie for The Believer magazine — rolls through the Pacific Northwest first, hitting a lot of her home turf.
Much has been made of the Virginia-born artist growing up in cities along the I-5 corridor, from Olympia to Vancouver, B.C. While Case has since moved to Chicago, then Tucson, Arizona, and now Vermont, she will always be a Pacific Northwest girl in the way the area has affected her rainy sound and grey subject matter. She's still a member of the Vancouver, B.C., supergroup the New Pornographers. Her most recent record, the 2013 release The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, is possibly her most personal and heartfelt yet.
The spring tour corresponds with the rerelease of her 2006 album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which comes out on limited edition red vinyl for Record Store Day on Saturday. (Find out more about local Record Store Day happenings in the Events section.) ♦
Neko Case with Rodrigo Amarante • Mon, April 20, at 8 pm • $35 • All-ages • Bing Crosby Theater • 901 W. Sprague • TicketsWest.com • 227-7638
