Neko Case live!

Neko Case
Vic Theatre, Chicago
Friday, March 31, 2006

While the debate rages whether Fox Confessor Brings The Flood is a darker affair than 2002’s Blacklisted, Neko Case used Friday’s gig at The Vic to bring considerable levity to her material. Casting the cloak of reverential austerity aside, Case led a five-piece band through a virtual hootenanny.

That vocalist Kelly Hogan, bassist Tom V. Ray, drummer Jason Creps, and guitarists Jon Rauhouse and Paul Rigby only tour with Case and aren’t an actual band is something of a shame. While their familiarity with the material was an obvoius boon, so was their stage rapport with the featured performer, keeping her bouyant and on her toes with quips and goofs. Hogan, whose locking harmonies made it difficult to discern whose part was which, played a snappy McMahon to Case’s Carson, especially when mocking KISS’ Paul Stanley, “It’s not the hot dogs that made Chicago famous, it’s YOU!” Rauhouse made up for ill-timed banjo feedback with spot-on soloing, while Creps kicked “John Saw That Number” in the ass when the rest of the band was about to settle into a middling plod.

Elsewhere, they recreated Fox Confessor with an almost Wilco-esque authority, ditching some of “Teenage Feeling”‘s Brill Building sway for a rootsy stroll and pulling back on the new album’s title track to let Case parlay its heft. Rigby gave her cover of Bob Dylan’s “Buckets Of Rain” some seed-spittin’ twang, and seemed to meet Case’s constant desire to replicate her friends The Sadies with otherworldly reverb.

When it came time, Case reminded the audience of whom they came to see, ironically by mastering a pair of covers: Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Soulful Shade Of Blue” and the haunted, traditional “Wayfaring Stranger.” But even as solemnity crept back in, it never stayed too long; Case and company would never let it.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly