Flashback Friday!
In honour of Neko Case’s awesome Twitter response to Playboy and others yesterday (which gets extra marks for dropping a superb “Mad Men” reference: “DON’T PEGGY OLSEN ME, MOTHERFUCKERS”), here’s the story I did on her in December 2002 for SOCAN: “Neko Case: Honourary Canadian, Proud SOCAN Member.”
I had interviewed her by phone at her home in Chicago. If I recall correctly, she had said she was preparing to leave the next day for Arizona (New Mexico?) to do some recording for her next project, and she was in the midst of doing her laundry.
Interestingly, I found this outtake from our chat, which echoes the sentiments of her recent expressions on social media (notice how I avoided using the terms “rant” or “tirade” there?).
Q: Blacklisted has been described as a dark record, but I understand that’s not quite how you see it…
NC: “Well, I think it’s a fairly positive album myself. I mean, there’s sadness on it, but sadness isn’t the end-all-be-all of everything; sadness is the element of other things. Sadness isn’t all bad. But there’s a lot of hopefulness on that record. I hope that you can hear hopefulness.”
Q: The “darkness” is perhaps more in the sound of the music than in the lyrics — that late night highway sound….
NC: “Yeah, it’s a bit cinematic. I think I would say cinematic before I would say dark.”
Q: I love the song “Deep Red Bells.” It evokes something by Johnny Cash or David Lynch.
NC: “I can see that. It’s nice to be compared to men for a change. It makes me feel like people actually listen to the album. Because it’s really good to just to grab a lady’s name and go ‘she sounds like blah blah blah blah’, which is flattering, but then you wonder if anybody actually listened to the album or not.”
