- There’s a certain contrariness about the latest Neko Case record. She’s one of America’s best regarded alt-country, indie-rock voices and songwriters and one of the most commanding too, in sheer, rounded volume as much as anything else. Still even with all that power streaming out and on Hell-On -never fear- it still does, Neko doesn’t exactly follow the path she’s beaten in the course of her own career. In fact, it can be a little hard to get a handle on where she’s going at all.
No wait, check that, she is kind of doing what she’s always done, although actually, it’s more what she’s done with that supergroup of hers, The New Pornographers. Hell-On is littered with the kind of highly accessible indie-rock-pop that she and AC Newman have made such a trademark of their tenure in that group. Sometimes it seems even poppier than that, like the positively boppy Bad Luck, which dollops on ‘60's girl-group and sweet country sounds. She smooths out that ripple with a nice, long, mopy roiling and rootsy duet with Mark Lanegan that is Curse Of The I-5 Corridor, to weigh things back down again. A few misdirections aside the key elements are here: the worldly, bittersweet songwriting, the oddball but endearing embellishments: from synthesisers to bass saxes and -in lieu of a supergroup- an endless procession of guest spots: including Beth Ditto, K.D. Lang, Robert Forster (!) and, of course, AC Newman.
It’s the ease with which all the sweetness washes over you, made even easier by the glossy finish that Case and co-producer Björn Yttling (of Peter, Björn And John) which suddenly catches, when the bitter half of the record comes seeping up and over. There’s a needling uncertainty that echoes out through the music, beginning in Case’s vocal delivery.
Her voice, as large and smooth as the music itself, delivers with perfect clarity, though comprehension flits just beyond the grasp as Case’s lightly cryptic lyrics seep in. Sooner or later though, the repetitive themes of uncertainty, guilt and impending doom leak through the cracks that’re forming.
At every level there’s alarming fault-lines: Case starts at the most expansive, explaining how God isn’t going to save anyone on the album’s title track: “God is not a contract or a guy / God is an unspecified tide / You cannot time its tables / It sets no glass or gables / God is a lusty tire fire / Its bristles scrape and strike the stage / A rock-paper-scissors rage...” Sometimes she draws the scope right back, sweating past indiscretions and personal regret in Curse Of The I-5: “And now I'm so scared about mystery / I fear I smell extinction in the / Folds of this novacaine age coming on / I miss the smell of mystery / Reverb leaking outta tavern doors / And not knowing how the sounds were made ... Baby, I'm afraid / But it's not your fault Maybe I should go / Home alone tonight.”
Extinction is a recurring theme and one that blurs the lines between all of the different failures Case feels, dragging us down to destruction. Take Last Lion Of Albion with its wide-ranging swipe at the commercial desecration of … so many things “Last lion of Albion /The last she-wolf to mother Rome / The last virgin to wash ashore / You'll feel extinction / Last lion of Albion / The last of the Mohicans gone / The last cedars of Lebanon / You'll feel extinction ... Last lion of Albion / Last tiger of Tasmania / The last she-wolf to suckle Rome / You'll feel extinction / When you see your face / Face on their money.”
It’s as though this sensation of doom was just a bit too much for Neko Case to bear and so this record’s diatribe of doom gets dosed up with more pop than she’s ever served up before: just keep serving up spoonfuls of sugar until the medicine goes down. It makes for a wild and uncertain ride, like you’re never quite sure what emotion to feel. Hell-On has quite a lot of heaven in it too. It doesn’t end up being everything to everyone, but then, Neko Case never intended it to be.
- Chris Cobcroft.