And so on to another leading light of the new country revival, Neko Case. Case has an altogether more strident vocal delivery and her approach to country is much more aggressive. As a result her records, while still fabulous and occasionally lovely, have a tough edge to them - you get the feeling that you wouldn't want to mess with her. Her second album and the breakthrough, Furnace Room Lullaby (2000) was credited to Neko Case and Her Boyfriends and although the band didn't last that long, they provide a suitable Knitters-style backing for Case's rough and ready approach. After a few years in great cutesy indie bands (she was even in Cub for a while), I guess she was looking for something to mark her out and fists-up country must have seemed like just the thing. If it was that cynical though it doesn't matter because Case's albums are, again like the Knitters', perfect examples of why country still matters and why it should matter to indie kids. Furnace Room Lullaby has its share of the cliches (twanging guitar, pedal steel, occasional drawling male backing vocals), and uses them perfectly and the album never once sounds like pastiche.
Apparently fed up with Seattle, Case left the Boyfriends behind and moved to Chicago, the first album after which was Canadian Amp (2001). It's a great mini-LP composed mostly of cover versions, and recorded very simply (it's effectively a home demo). There's a very straightforward honesty to everything on Canadian Amp and it really benefits. The version of 'Knock Loud' is absolutely haunting, Neil Young's 'Dreaming Man' is delivered very simply, and even the perennial 'Poor Ellen Smith' is made to feel fresh by a lo-fi banjo setting and Case multi-tracking her vocals to create an authentically odd harmony that sounds like it would have been sung in the mountains way back when. It's a small, modest record but it's a mightily effective one. I haven't got the next couple of albums so it's straight on to Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006). Now to my mind this is where everything really went right - I think Fox Confessor is an absolutely wonderful album. The country-ness is toned down to a mood, Case's songwriting is stronger than ever and there's an incredibly warm atmosphere to the album with occasional delicate strings, some Lynchian reverb drenched guitar twang, and some fabulously odd backing vocals, and all of these effects are buried in the mix in the most perfect way to create the faintly melancholy and crepuscular air. It's a wonderful album in its tone and in its delivery and the songs just go straight to the head and the heart.
When Catatonia released their first EP in 1993 I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Listening to it now it's clear that they were so terribly in thrall to the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine (just like everybody else to be fair) that they were never going to make a particularly original start. However, it's still quite a lovely record in its own lo-fi indie pop sort of way. 'New Mercurial Heights' is really nice and 'For Tinkerbell' and 'Sweet Catatonia are decent pop songs, and ones that they would revisit on their debut album. Way Beyond Blue (1996) was preceded by a few singles between '93 and '96 of which 'Lost Cat' and 'You've Got a Lot to Answer For' were good choices to set out the bands stall. Big pop with an indie touch, as evidently over the years between the first EP and the album they had been honing the big pop melody element of their music. The singles have some decent B-sides, notably 'All Girls Are Fly' and the rather sad 'Do You Believe In Me'. In fact it's not often discussed that Cerys Matthews' lyrics and vocal melodies on the early releases are really good with an air of terrible sadness which I think often goes overlooked. The album itself plays up to the big pop song side and has some great indie disco numbers (the two singles mentioned, 'Bleed', 'Whale'). Listening to these records now I'm torn because I still think they're really good and the band should have gone on to better things, rather than that 'Mulder & Scully'/'Road Rage' nonsense. Still all in all the honest truth is that although they were nowhere near as irrelevant as Echobelly or the Bluetones they really weren't in the front rank.
Catherine were kind of a sister band to the Smashing Pumpkins, they played and worked on each others early records and Billy Corgan had known Kerry Brown for some years before they started playing. It's no surprise then that Catherine's albums sound exactly like the Smashing Punpkins. The blistering guitar workouts, the drumming patterns, even the vocal melodies are cast from the identical mould and I suppose it's a shame for Catherine that this was the case because in truth it could really have been either band that made it. The first full-length album, Sorry! (1994) has all the requisite plodding, chugging, bulldozing guitar riffs and the occasional spacey atmospherics and laconic, absent vocals that this stuff demands and in my opinion it's easily as good an album as Gish by the Smashing Pumpkins. Second and final album, Hot Saki and Bedtime Stories (1997), is a much more varied affair with a heavy dose of tongue in cheek glam rock lightening the heavier slabs of processed psych-rock. It's a lot more fun but, as with Sorry!, something just isn't quite right and although it's a good, solid album, you can see why after this the game was pretty much up for the band. There are some great pop-rock numbers and there's a healthy dose of self-aware irony ('Pink Floyd Poster' sticks it to themselves for a start) and it's nice to know that the album exists, but it's not an essential sadly.
Last up today is Cat Power's third album, What Would the Community Think (1996). Now people love Cat Power but I'm afraid I've never really understood her appeal. There's all that (probably made up) stuff about her terrible emotional life and alcoholism, etc, etc, et bloody indie cliche after indie cliche story cetera. But I think that's what seems odd to me about her records (and, intererstingly her old squeeze Bill Callahan's), despite apparently coming across as reports from a psychological battefield, none of it sounds remotely authentic. I think she means it be demonic, haunted Hubert Selby Jr, but I'm afraid it's actually just plain old hack liar Jack Kerouac. So what do we have? Everything is very slow, so far so obvious. Vocals that go from plantive chant to strangled anguished cry. Yep, check. Minimal structural development in the songs? Absolutely. It's all so very, very transparent. I think it's all balls and I think anyone that believes it has been duped. In many ways I think it's highly appropriate that she stayed with Matador, everyone's favourite keep it real indie label turned pretend to keep it real corporate lackey indie label. They were pretending all along too. But if I'm wrong about all the above, then it's simply that I don't much like the records.
Days and days and days of Nick Cave to come from tomorrow...
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