Throwback Thursday – Neko Case – “Guided By Wires”
Posted on | October 22, 2009 | 3 Comments
1. Neko Case, who swooped down out of Canada in 1997 with The Virginian, turned up the twang with her 2000 release Furnace Room Lullaby. “Guided By Wires”, the second track from this record, calls everyone who claims to be vintage country into question. With the combination of her arcing voice, a simple backing band, and lyrics that pledge allegiance to her heroes on the radio, Case put a dent in the side of the catchphrase “insurgent country”, approaching her work with an authentic sound that didn’t sound like a revival at all.
2. Paying tribute to the “voices that did comfort her”, Case relays a few life lessons she learned, noting that “even in my darkest recollection/ there was someone singing my life back to me”. Riding a loping beat that suggests the white lines of a highway flying by, Case speaks of her life being “made of short stories”, a concept she would explore further on Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. The refrain finds her admitting that she “owes much to the nameless and all the surrogates/ for those who were singing my life back to me.” Not only does Neko’s voice rattle around in a vintage echo chamber, the guitars chatter with a sound free of modern effects, and the whole track resonates with the sound of people playing music live in a room. The sound is possibly best described as not “vintage”, but “real”. With a stripped down sound that leaves her nothing to hide behind, Case’s lyrics are refreshingly simple and straightforward.
3. So much of our musical history is made up of the music we hear before we are old enough to put the record on ourselves. Rhett Miller spoke of his parents playing the Kingston Trio, and Danny Balis talked about his father playing Merle Haggard’s live records. Neko doesn’t get specific, but she doesn’t need to: the ghosts of Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, and Dusty Springfield live in her music. Though she would follow her muse further away from this sound with later records like Middle Cyclone, Case pays tribute to her heroes and writes herself into the history of country music with “Guided By Wires”, which may one day rush out of someone’s stereo and re-create the experience she describes.