Neko Case Brings American Noir to Campbell Hall

There have been few better chroniclers of American darkness within the last half century than avant-pop and country singer/songwriter Neko Case, who comes to Campbell Hall on Friday, November 18. With her voice of wild woe and surreally sorrowful lyrics, Case has performed as a poet of pain and personhood, grappling with subjects no less weighty than environmental destruction, the challenges and triumphs of womanhood, gun violence and the nightmarish shadow side of American dreams, and the void of depression itself. Yet in her fearless tackling of heavy subjects — with a voice that could shift the course of rivers and part massive mountains — she has shown herself to be a symbol of courage, strength, independence, and musical innovation, a vital artist now more than ever.

Case released her first album, The Virginian, just shy of 20 years ago, and soon after, she went on to work with indie-rock critical darlings The New Pornographers. Even as a group member, Case’s stark individualism stood out — one she has emboldened ever further across the course of her country-noir career.

Though an awareness of gloom runs through many of her tunes, there is equally a strong sense of powerful self-determination and self-fulfillment, with Case as a frontierswoman of the 21st century. Musically, she continues to forge pioneering paths with her fellow female artists, too. The year 2016 saw the formation of case/lang/veirs, the supergroup she formed with k.d. lang and Laura Veirs, and the release of their eponymous debut earlier this year when lang proposed that the three record an album together. Case says it was a learning experience to work with such distinctively individual artists. “There are things, completely innate, that I can’t learn. Like k.d. has such a pitch, for example, and a natural genius of production, and Laura is a fucking incredible guitar player, and both have incredibly strict work ethics,” she said. The work-ethic difference, in particular, was a new approach, with the two being more schedule-oriented — structural Scorpios, Case said — in contrast to her own more free-form and organic creation process. “I want to unravel the big mystery — it’s fun, the mystery of it,” she said of songwriting.