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What the Music Meant

This Week: The haunting voice of Neko Case, something new by Pretty Girls Make Graves, and Rhett Miller breaks away

Neko Case
Blacklisted (Bloodshot)

Tom Waits once said he used to think songs were like UFOs or ghosts—mysterious apparitions that would suddenly appear and then vanish, and the songwriter had little control over when they might show up. You'd just be wise to grab onto them when you can.

The songs on Neko Case's touching new album strike me as just such phantoms floating through the air. The songs bleed together and the whole thing rises up like a lush lullaby of the dead.

She's backed this time around by an impressive group of musicians, including Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, Dallas Good of The Sadies, and Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico.

The songs ostensibly aim for that classic pop sound—a la Patsy Cline—but there's an edge that keeps them from becoming saccharine. Still, it's that damn voice of hers that makes the whole thing spectral. It's not a perfect vessel, but she's got an incredible range and depth. When she stretches out, it never comes off showy or disingenuous.

The poetry of the lyrics helps on that score. On "Deep Red Bells," she wonders, "Where does this mean world cast its cold eye?/ Who's left to suffer long about you?/ Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag past empty lots and early graves?/ Those like you who lost their way murdered on the interstate while the red bells rang like thunder."

Nor does it sound painful or immediately spooky; it's more like she's singing for the ghosts of a million broken hearts, cut loose at last from bodies that could no longer bear the agony. You're left with nothing to understand or ground you. You just drift.

Oh, but Case says it so much better "It's better my love that we hover like bees/ 'cause there's no sure footing, no love I believe."

—Joe Tarr

Pretty Girls Make Graves
Good Health (Lookout! Records)

This Seattle quintet welds riot grrl herky-jerk rhythms to more masculine hard rawk conventions (tweedly guitars, Neil Peart drum fills, Aldo Nova keyboards). Not really surprising, considering that you've got one woman (Andrea Zollo, who has a terrific Joan Jett-style sneer) fronting a band of fellas. The result is an admirably compact debut; in the days of the bloated 70-minute album, it's nice to find somebody still clocking in under half an hour. And it's a good half-hour. At first, the songs lurch around disconcertingly, but the tunes peek out after a couple times through. There are at least two I can't get out of my head.

The Pretty Girls bring the requisite paeans to rock 'n' roll salvation (the opening track asks, "Do you remember what the music meant?"), along with what could be a detox song ("I'm sick with 22 days to go"), and the best romantic losers-on-the-run anthem I've heard in ages (when Zollo promises her boyfriend accomplice "You're all that matters," the unexpected softness in her voice tells the whole story).

There's been a lot of talk lately about the return of rock, mostly via the Strokes/Hives/Vines garage axis. Yeah, whatever. Pretty Girls Make Graves have fewer trendy reference points, but their best songs are something different: new rock music that actually sounds new. Not revolutionary or genre-defining, but new—and that's enough for 2002. "All we are is trying not to fall into line," Zollo howls. Mission accomplished.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

Rhett Miller
The Instigator (Elektra)

Rhett Miller has always been a rock star. Even as part of a larger unit—the Old 97's Miller was the one who had tragic love affairs, drank too much, and cultivated a poetic air of recklessness that made the girls swoon. And the 97's songs, full of hard-charging, y'alternative swagger, only fed the Miller mystique.

But time has a way of marching on. Now, each member of the band has married; some have reproduced. Miller, however, is still a rock star—one who's gotten hitched to model, moved to L.A., and received a fashion victim hairdo. Still, there's something about him that escapes the cliche. The Instigator, his first solo project, is chock full of addictive pop nuggets that betray a keen talent that is hitting its stride. Even as the suits at Elektra package Miller for a mass audience, his music reveals something deeper than this glossy, John Mayer-meets-Ryan Adams image.

Take "This Is What I do," a bouncy pop rocker with an infectious chorus: I'm gonna sing this song forever/ about a girl that I once knew/ And how she is always leaving/ This is what I do. While it may not be a great revelation, it does betray a willingness to skewer this persona. And Miller manages to unpretentiously drop egghead literary references, running from Kafka ("Our Love") to DeLillo ("World Within the World") to Sylvia Plath ("Point Shirley") and back again, giving us a small hint that there's more going on behind his blue eyes than The Instigator's addled cover art would have you believe.

You could hear the direction that Miller was heading with last year's Old 97's disc Satellite Rides, which was the offspring of rangy twang mated with Brit pop sensibilities. While not every song is a keeper—the bland "I Want to Live" is easily forgotten—most manage to wiggle their way into your subconscious just like good music should.

—Adrienne Martini
 

September 26, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 39
© 2002 Metro Pulse