When I Grow Up I Want to be Neko Case

Last night I had the privilege of witnessing an extremely talented artist in concert. If you are not familiar with Neko Case then I recommend you stop reading now and immediately purchase her music on itunes or at your local music store. (Side note: when is the last time you went to your local music store? There is a CD Warehouse across the street from our office and everyday I'm impressed not to see going out of business signs up.) Neko undoubtedly has the most powerful voice I've ever heard in person (and yes I'm including Celine Dion since I did attend her concert when I was in high school, but that's another story for another time). She sounds exactly like she does on her CD which you might think would be a given attribute of a singer, but in this age of auto-tune and shock value it's clear that actual singing ability isn't a 'must have'.

The concert was excellent. Along with her awe-inspiring voice, her band and back up singer are extremely talented as well. Part of what I love about attending concerts is getting to see a piece of the artist's personality. I was surprised and a little disappointed that Neko seemed uncomfortably shy and I've never seen a backup singer do most of the talking between songs. I understand being shy in front of 1,000 people but I just wish we could have heard a little more explanation from her regarding the inspiration for certain songs.

Overall I give the concert a 9.2 out of 10. Points were deducted for the lack of talking and also I wish she would have played longer. Points were given back because while she did make the audience endure the terrible tradition of clapping her back out for an encore it was a very short period of clapping and begging (I'd say it was 2 minutes). I really wish artists would just say, "These are the last 3 songs and then you can clap and give me a standing ovation only once. I respect you and will not force you to grovel when we all know I'm coming back in 4-6 minutes regardless of how loud you are." I'll never understand the encore.

And finally, as if you needed another reason to be sold on Neko Case, can we just agree that her latest album cover (pictured at the top) is simply amazing. It was ranked #1 album cover of the decade by Paste magazine and I can't say I disagree. For your viewing pleasure, here's a video of an old song called Favorite which I think really demonstrates her powerful voice - enjoy! (video is not from last night although she did sing it last night)