Neko Case: Wild Creatures (2LP, career retrospective) [ANTI]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set gathers 23 songs across four sides, including the then-new song "Oh, Shadowless." It runs from "Furnace Room Lullaby" through her 2018 album Hell-On, the songs critics had in mind when they called her voice a flamethrower.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Includes the new song "Oh, Shadowless"

About the album

Neko Case has a soft spot for Canada, and Canada has a soft spot right back. She moved to Vancouver in 1994 for art school, drummed in a string of local punk bands, sang on The New Pornographers' Mass Romantic, and later recorded with The Sadies and Carolyn Mark. Wild Creatures arrived in 2022 as a look back across all of it, starting as a digital collection with a website of animated artwork by Laura Plansker.

That site came with essays on each song by friends and admirers, including A.C. Newman, Dan Bejar, David Byrne, Shirley Manson, Jeff Tweedy, Rosanne Cash and Waxahatchee. The songs speak for themselves: "I Wish I Was the Moon" and "Deep Red Bells" from her country noir years, "Man" and "Night Still Comes" from her bolder later records, "This Tornado Loves You" with its gale-force vocal, and "Hold On, Hold On," which might be the best thing she's ever sung.

Case once said she never knew where she wanted to go with her voice. Judging by these 23 songs, it found its own way, and it seems to have taken the scenic route through Vancouver.

Also at Kops: more Neko Case on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Anti- (cat# 87824-1), a reissue of the 2022 compilation.