Neko

Neon Memes • Tomorrow evening, Wednesday, September 24, Neko Case will take the stage at the Pageant (6161 Delmar Boulevard, 314.726.6161), and I wish that news excited me more. Pace B.B. King, the thrill isn't quite gone, but the fires of my adoration for her have certainly abated. Previously, an appearance by the sultry little redhead would have driven me wild on any number of levels. Case's work first drew my notice almost a decade ago, when my friend Steve Pick interviewed her for the Riverfront Times. As he generally does, Steve wrote compellingly of "Case's rich powerhouse alto" and her then-new second release, Furnace Room Lullaby. From its dreamy opener, "Set Out Running," to its closer, the haunting title track, that 12-song disc from 2000 enchanted me. (My fave? The disc's midpoint, "Thrice All American," Case's heartbreaking tribute to her hometown of Tacoma.) Her subsequent releases, though, never equaled Furnace Room Lullaby, at least to my tin ear, and even though her latest, 2006's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, has received considerable praise from musicians and writers I know and trust, it left me cold―I may have spun it all of three times. ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor