Now Hear This

It seems like eons ago that Neko Case’s last record, Fox Confessor Brings The Food, made my Best Of 2006 list. The three separate editions doled out since its initial release only served to make me hungrier for new material. A double live disc in 2007 (of a performance recorded 4 years prior), another record and tour with the New Pornographers as well as collaborations with Crooked Fingers, M. Ward and Giant Sand were fine placeholders but when was that new record coming out?! Well come March 3rd the wait is over. Anti- will release Middle Cyclone and I for one cannot wait. If the lead single is any indicator we’ve got some classic Neko to look forward to. Check it out:

People Got A Lotta Nerve

Middle Cyclone track list:
1. This Tornado Loves You
2. The Next Time You Say Forever
3. People Got A Lotta Nerve
4. Polar Nettles
5. Vengeance Is Sleeping
6. Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth (a Sparks cover)
7. Middle Cyclone
8. Fever
9. Magpie To The Morning
10. I’m An Animal
11. Prison Girls
12. Don’t Forget Me (a Harry Nilsson cover)
13. The Pharaohs
14. Red Tide
15. Marais La Nuit

Her regular band (are they still called her boyfriends?) of guitarist Paul Rigby, bassist Tom V. Ray, drummer Barry Mirochnick, multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhouse and backing vocalist Kelly Hogan are joined by the likes of M. Ward, Garth Hudson, Sarah Harmer, and members of The New Pornographers, Los Lobos, Calexico, The Sadies, Visqueen, The Lilys and Giant Sand.

After a handful of gigs in Europe later this month Neko will be hitting the South and Midwest with Crooked Fingers. Nothing scheduled for the West Coast yet but I’m really hoping Crooked Fingers will be making that swing too. I’m dying to hear “Your Control” live (you can find the studio version here).

Tour dates are up on Neko’s website here.

In related Neko news, the only record by Maow, the slightly countrified punk pop band Neko played drums (and only occasionaly sang) in is getting the remaster treatment from Mint Records. The Unforgiving Sounds Of… should be in a record store near you.

In my post about Studs Terkel’s passing I lamented the fact the he’d just missed the election of our nation’s first black president. Now another crusader for civil rights will miss Obama’s inauguration. Odetta, who passed way Tuesday, was scheduled to perform at that historic event. That surely would have been something to see. I found better pictures of her but none seemed as appropriate as the the shot above of her performing before the crowd assembled at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, singing into the same microphones that would broadcast Martin Luther King’s dream.

Another Man Don’ Gone

This is a previously unreleased track from the reissue of Odetta & Larry (retitled The Tin Angel after the nightclub in San Francisco where it was recorded live back in 1953). Her passionate delivery even at that early stage is riveting. Goodbye Odetta.