Neko Case, April 10, Keswick Theater

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Neko Case, April 10, Keswick Theater

POSTED: Thursday, April 16, 2009, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: Music Show

Photos by Lauren Zalut

The next time you say forever I will punch you in the face

Neko Case can get pretty intense. Her protagonists don't brood or pine when they've been wronged ' they destroy towns, bite off legs and land haymakers.

On Friday night at the Keswick, the adoration of the sold-out crowd was intense enough to merit its own song on the next album. This was not necessarily a good thing: in Neko Case's lyrics, emotions that powerful often lead to violence. Fortunately, the red-headed headliner's laid-back on-stage personality kept the show from ending like one of her songs.

A projection screen flanked by a couple of spooky trees and topped by a supervising owl showed a combination of video and animation featuring burning buildings, seemingly endless prairies, trains, predators, time-lapsed clouds flying overhead, singing deer and straight, empty highways. Impressively, the images on the screen had been matched to each song. Despite the visual stimuli, Neko Case's absurdly clear voice and commanding stage presence monopolized the audience's attention. The lap steel player managed to wrest the eyes of the crowd away with a couple of impressive swells, but those eyes rubber-banded back to the woman standing center stage in short order.

Between songs, the frontwoman daydreamed about a machine that would pump potato chips into her mouth at high velocity and apologized for her rambling, explaining that her 'synapses are wrecked from 'the menses'' while making air quotes. Impassioned requests were met with a brief, 'duly noted.' The Keswick theater patrons hung on every word, completely charmed.

Neko Case played electric guitar on a few songs and acoustic guitar on a few more, but she left both in their stands for most of the night, letting her impossibly gorgeous voice make its own way through the setlist. Half of the 22 songs (maybe one more than half ' I can't read my handwriting on the ninth song) came from her new album Middle Cyclone, and another five came from the preceding album, 2006's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

The highlight, though, was the final piece of the encore, "Knock Loud," a cover of a Sook-Yin Lee tune that appeared on Neko Case's 2001 EP Canadian Amp. A monologue carrying serious emotional weight but lacking the tumultuous action that crops up in lyrics written by Neko Case herself, "Knock Loud" proved to be a fine match for the stately venue and the seated, well-mannered, enthralled crowd.

SETLIST
(AG = acoustic guitar, EG = electric guitar, NG = no guitar)

1. Maybe Sparrow (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, EG)
2. People Got A Lotta Nerve (Middle Cyclone, AG)
3. Fever (Middle Cyclone, NG)
4. Hold On, Hold On (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, EG)
5. The Pharaohs (Middle Cyclone, NG)
6. Middle Cyclone (Middle Cyclone, NG)
7. Deep Red Bells (Blacklisted, AG)
8. I Wish I Was the Moon (Blacklisted, NG)
9. [didn't write this title down, don't remember] (EG)
10. Prison Girls (Middle Cyclone, NG)
11. The Tigers Have Spoken (The Tigers Have Spoken, EG)
12. Margaret vs. Pauline (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, AG)
13. Red Tide (Middle Cyclone, NG)
14. Don't Forget Me (Middle Cyclone, Harry Nilsson cover, NG)
15. That Teenage Feeling (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, NG)
16. This Tornado Loves You (Middle Cyclone, NG)
*encore*
17. Vengeance Is Sleeping (Middle Cyclone, NG)
18. Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth (Middle Cyclone, Sparks cover, NG)
19. Favorite (The Tigers Have Spoken, EG)
20. Magpie to the Morning (Middle Cyclone, NG)
21. Star Witness (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, NG)
22. Knock Loud (Canadian Amp, Sook-Yin Lee cover, NG)

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