Today the artist, producer and songwriter Neko Case releases Wild Creatures, a digital-only career retrospective album containing twenty-two of Neko’s most impactful tracks from her discography as well as one new song.
Set a reminder to watch the video for new song, ‘Oh, Shadowless’;
Fans are invited to visit nekocase.com where Wild Creatures is expanded in its presentation to feature new and animated artwork by Laura Plansker for each of its 23 tracks. Songs from the compilation will play in real time while scrolling through the site to read short essays and track-by-track commentary from guest contributors celebrating Neko’s two decades of solo work including long time collaborators A.C. Newman, Dan Bejar and M. Ward, culture-defining contemporaries David Byrne, Shirley Manson, Jeff Tweedy and Rosanne Cash and new generations of artists like Waxahatchee, Julien Baker, Kevin Morby, Allison Russell and Margo Price. In addition, folklorist Adrienne Mayor, ANTI- Records president Andy Kaulkin, and longtime New Yorker staff writer & author Susan Orlean also contributed pieces, among many others.
Gathering power year after year, Neko sings with the fierce abandon of a newborn infant crying in a basket in the woods. Since escaping the labels of country and Americana, the gorgeous train-whistle vocals of her early career sit submerged in her later style, where their ghost can appear any minute. When her voice jumps an octave, it’s almost visible, like sparks at night. “I never knew where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do with my voice,” she says, “but I just wanted to do it so bad.”
Is there another songwriter so fearless and inventive? Bending decades of pop music into new shapes, Neko wields her voice like a kiss and her metaphors like a baseball bat. She has cast the fishing net of her career wide—from Seattle and Vancouver to Chicago and Stockholm, setting up her home base on a farm in New England.
Neko Case songs often exist with distinct sections that recall symphonies. Changing from ballads or waltz time to a rock beat and back, the elements sometimes seem wired together to make an improvised explosive device. In studio, Neko obsesses over sound. Always involved with how her albums were recorded, she’s seized and embraced the role of producer.
Standing halfway up a half-built stairway, she hammers nails into place as she goes along. Despite blowing every deadline she’s ever been given, Neko feels in her bones when a song or a project is done. If her career were mapped, it might be a choose-your-own-adventure book. She hasn’t masterminded each album with some absolute endpoint in mind. “I’ve never been afraid to ask for help. I’m able to trust myself in the moments where I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
She’s doing it on her own terms, but the legacy she’s building is one that can stand up to music made by any other solo artist in her lifetime. Don’t look away; you never know what might happen. “I’m just trying,” she says, “to be myself as hard as I can.”
Get Wild Creatures here
1. I’m An Animal
2. Lady Pilot
3. Halls of Sarah
4. Man
5. Star Witness
6. I Wish I Was The Moon
7. The Next Time You Say Forever
8. Favorite
9. Hell-On
10. Hold On, Hold On
11. Polar Nettles
12. Wild Creatures
13. Furnace Room Lullaby
14. A Widow’s Toast
15. Deep Red Bells
16. This Tornado Loves You
17. Winnie
18. Night Still Comes
19. Maybe Sparrow
20. Things That Scare Me
21. The Tigers Have Spoken
22. Set Out Running
23. Oh, Shadowless
