Neko Case

She was live at Austin City Limits, apparently. Listen to her! especially if you can get ahold of the ACL recording (emusic has it). She has a deep resonance to her voice, like the taste of coffee with no sugar. There's just enough cream, though, to make you hanker. It makes you hunker down: dark and spicy and open and bold.

Austin City Limits holds much nostalgia for me. I remember thinking, when we'd watch it on Saturday nights at my house, that ACL was a place all its own; where twinkling city lights and open air made a good country musician out of you. I remember Leo Kottke ("...and you wake up, and you crawl out of bed, you crawl out of bed, and you wake up..."), James Taylor and Emmylou Harris. These people populated my adolescent dreams, and will forever be associated with Daddy and the drawers and drawers of typewriter-labeled cassette tapes. Now, interestingly, I see that the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Calexico have been there. That seems odd to me, somehow.

In the truck on the way down the mountain tonight, singing loudly along to Pierce Pettis, I discovered a new singing technique that might just make me a belter yet. The only way I can describe it is to come at the notes from above, overcome them, and fill the voice with vibrado.