There are few voices strong enough to sustain an album for me in and of themselves. Okay, so there are none. But Neko Case’s is about as close as it comes. Case's album Furnace Room Lullaby was released in 2000 as her second album and was re-released to coincide with the re-release of Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which now comes as a bonus disc of unreleased material—that is, newly released, not re-released—and another re-release of a previously released album, Blacklisted. Phew. Anyways.
The modern music vernacular necessitates that the music on Furnace Room Lullaby be categorized as alt-country, to distinguish it from popular mainstream country, or “Wal-Mart country,” as Chuck Klosterman descriptively put it. The alt-country label, however, does a certain injustice. There really isn’t a hint of irony or kitsch on here, no over-the-top twang, no evidence that Neko Case is singing the way she is for any reason other than that she can find no better way to bare her soul. Nor are there throwback references to drinking muddy water, going to the saloon, or traveling across the dust bowl that would give the music the sort of disingenuity that can taint some of the bluegrass and roots rock penned by modern independent-minded artists. For instance, Furnace Room Lullaby opens powerfully with “Set Out Running,” a lament over a lover summed up by the final line of the chorus, “I just can’t shake this feeling that I’m nothing in your eyes.” In an ostensibly simple love song with fairly few lyrics, the loneliness it relates takes on an expansive reach with her sprinkling of imagery such as seeking to have “the winds out on the prairie whip the tears from my eyes.” She sticks to themes that are relatively timeless while retaining just enough classic country imagery to convey the sense of desolation that it can achieve at its best. The slower ballads such as this on the album tend to be more compelling than the faster tunes, the main reason being that the slower songs simply provide a better showcase for the rich timbre and passionate force of Case’s voice.
While the critical praise for Case only seems to grow with each passing album, Furnace Room Lullaby already features Case’s sound at its finest. With her voice, the beautifully arranged sounds of the acoustic and pedal steel guitars, and her themes of heartbreak, Case revives a formula that itself, with good reason, has stood the test of time. |