by Alan Pedder | illustration by Eliza Lazy | view as PDF

The archetype of the fox as a totem of cunning and ingenuity goes at least as far back as Biblical times, and recurs again and again in almost every genre of story. In romance, the term can apply to either a beautiful woman or a distinguished older man; in adventure, the hunted or tenacious, artful hunter; in fairytales, a cheating despot or lovable rule-flouting rogue. Few other characters tread so finely down the line that marks out good from bad. But where a fox makes its path, does deceit necessarily follow, however well intentioned? With her new album Fox Confessor Brings The Flood being heralded in all quarters as a modern marvel of noirish storytelling and a distillation of her already formidable talent, Neko Case may know the answer. Alan Pedder meets her over lunch (salad, soup and fruit for you fact fans) on a freezing afternoon...

“The Fox Confessor is not the trickster,” Neko is quick to assert. “He’s an observer, he sees everything but he’s very elusive. You can ask him questions if you happen to chance upon him, but the likelihood he’ll give you a straight answer is slim.” Sounds like a politician, I venture and receive a wry smile. “He’s kind of like the demon go-between between Faust and the devil. When Faust makes the deal with the devil to be all-powerful, Satan sends his minion in to give him what he wants and Faust says to the demon, ‘ok, I’m the king of this now but I wanna know what life means, I wanna know what love means’. And the demon gets kinda irritated and says, ‘I would tell you that but your human brain is so tiny you couldn’t possibly contain it’, so that’s kind of what he is. But then he’s also half, ‘you won’t understand the meaning unless you have the experience. Sure I could tell you but you’re not going to get it.’

Does a similar principle apply to her lyrics? Like many artists, Neko is wary of people attributing every song to a direct personal experience, even when those same songs are so convincingly detailed. “I’m kinda hesitant to print the lyrics,” she says. “It makes it easier for the listener to make the songs their own, to insert their own life experiences into them if they want to. There’s room for a little ambiguity.” Still, the temptation to overanalyse Neko’s songs is certainly a strong one, and even more so when faced with Fox Confessor’s extraordinary wealth of literary, surrealist and sometimes absurd source material. Dirty Knife, for instance, is a streamlined version of an old family tale passed down to Neko from her grandmother. Almost Roald Dahl-esque in its fantastical vision of real-life events in which members of a household contract lead poisoning, go “completely bonkers” and burn all their furniture. “I narrowed it down to one person in the story because I tried to write it about all of them but it wasn’t concise enough for me,” she explains. “I try to keep things not too involved, so the story became not so much about the people but what was happening.” She pauses for a sip of water before adding a characteristically self-deprecating disclaimer, “It was easier, I’m lazy.”

Of course, laziness is by far the least of Neko’s traits; it may have been three and a bit years since her last studio album, Blacklisted, but she’s since done countless tours, appeared on two critically-worshipped albums by her sideline earner The New Pornographers, lovingly crafted the concept live disc The Tigers Have Spoken and topped a number of surveys, including a Playboy web poll for Sexiest Babe of Indie Rock in April 2003. In February, she was voted Female Artist of the Year at the 2006 PLUG Independent Music Awards without even releasing an album (Tigers was released in October 2004). Given that she was up against the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Laura Cantrell and Emiliana Torrini, she must be feeling pretty good about that, right? “Yeah, it’s nice,” she shrugs. “Odd, but nice. I had no idea it was happening so it was like being hit over the head. You spend a little time feeling kind of unworthy, like awww, that’s nice.”

It’s hard to imagine that this will be Neko’s only honour in the months to come. In several respects, Fox Confessor comes dangerously close to being a masterwork, and at 35 years old, Neko feels like she’s finally found the sound that suits her best. “I kinda had a clue on Blacklisted, but as far as songwriting goes, I hadn’t been doing it all that long. I mean, in the grand scheme of things. I wasn’t disappointed with Blacklisted, not by any means, but I feel like, with this record, I’ve kind of settled into my theme. There is progression… I mean, I hope there is and that people notice it. It is a different record, although it’s not as unrelated to Blacklisted as Blacklisted was to Furnace Room Lullabye.” She needn’t worry. It’s hard not to notice the record’s incredible blend of offbeat poetics, mythology and grit, not to mention the black humour that really comes to the fore on songs like Star Witness (“my true love drowned in a dirty old pan of oil”) and Hold On, Hold On (“I leave the party at 3am / alone, thank God / with a valium from the bride”). “The Ukrainian folktales have a bizarre sense of humour, but they are really funny. These songs relate to that tradition in the way that they’re talking about pretty bleak things, but not in a really moral way,” she explains. “They’re talking about them in a don’t-be-a-dumbass kind of way.”

Previous albums have barely touched on Neko’s Ukrainian ancestry, let alone scratched the surface so deeply and with such passion as Fox Confessor. So why the sudden urge to explore her European heritage, I wonder. “Basically, my Ukrainian ancestry is kinda nebulous because my family are Ukrainian but they won’t talk about it or speak the language. But they have many Ukrainian traits that they can’t hide, particularly the way they tell stories, and that’s a big part of this record. I’d always wondered what it meant to be Ukrainian because I had no idea and I think we were the only ones in Washington, we were it. So I had no idea what that meant and, you know, many people in America don’t get what it means to belong to something like a culture. If you’re English, you can say ‘We’re English! Look at us, we’ve got so much history’, you know, but in America everyone’s sort of separated off into these weird factions. Everybody banding together and saying ‘Hey, we’re American’ just sounds sort of gross because of the way things are over there. People aren’t really ready to do that, even though that’s kind of what they need to do. It’s a hard position to take as an American, especially the way things are currently. We’re all very unhappy about it and we all hate our government very much.” She smiles ruefully.

She sees the album as having an overarching central theme of “loss of faith”, and the obvious thought occurs that world events and the political climate in her homeland have plenty to do with it. “Yeah, they do, but it’s not just about that,” she says, looking up from her salad. “It’s about any kind of faith really. I’m just amazed by the fact that no matter how much faith you lose, there’s still a little grain of it left. It’s like physics, you can’t destroy matter. Sure, you can split the atom, but there’s energy in there too.” It’s a pertinent analogy, I think, one that you can get carried away with and apply to all manner of situations. But sticking with the topic of current affairs, I suggest that the rising tide of anti-Bush sentiment in the States is exactly that kind of energy, the thirst for change that boils up in a country divided in two. “Yeah, that’s the one inspiring thing. Finally, we’ve reached the point where people are openly speaking out against George Bush. He’s so despised, especially after Hurricane Katrina.” She sighs, “I’m not a Republican or a Democrat, but I don’t think it was a fair election. John Kerry should’ve been a lot more heavy-handed with George Bush but he wasn’t. There were things about him that weren’t cool, but none of them are good. It’s not like the Democrats are doing great things either, but they’re not like Bush.”

It’s the same here, I shrug, it feels like we’re kind of running out of choices. She nods, “That’s a good way to put it, running out of choices. And you know what, they’re pretending we still have choices but we don’t really. But it’s great that things are changing enough that when he tried to open up drilling in the Arctic, Congress actually said ‘get the fuck out of here’. And his argument about intellectual religion and what not, they also said ‘get the fuck out of here — we are separating church and state’. That whole ‘God made me do it’ defence, that is so disgusting. I don’t understand how he can separate himself from fundamentalist terrorists who blow people up on planes. They say that same thing as he does. He has no respect for our Constitution whatsoever, and it’s not like he’s the first, there have been many many horrible Presidents but, you know, he’s so over the top, such a bumbling idiot.”

Clearly, we could bitch about this all day, but the timely tumble of a parmesan shaving from Neko’s lips lightens the mood with a shy giggle. Besides, Neko has more interviews to do and a radio session to record this afternoon and I want to know more about her anthropomorphic protagonist, the Fox Confessor. We get to talking some more about her Ukrainian roots. “I’ve never been, but I’d love to go there. All I ever do is tour though so maybe we’ll have to work it out so that we can tour in the Ukraine.” I tell her that my background research for the interview revealed that the country actually has a national holiday called Old Fox Day. She beams, “Really? I didn’t know that!” It’s a recent thing, I explain, dedicated to a character from some popular satirical novel, some kind of great strategist, a trickster. “I don’t know if that’s the Fox Confessor or not,” she ponders. “There are lots of different foxes, probably, but it sounds cool. Actually, the Fox Confessor kind of parallels Native American folklore; the fox has the same sort of role.”

It could be argued that the Fox Confessor kind of parallels Neko herself. Neither seem to suffer fools all that gladly or to have any truck with what might be expected of them. Both are complex characters, both are capable of great tangential convolutions. But most importantly, both are progenitors of a new way of thinking, ready to kick down outmoded constructs whilst drawing heavily on the rites of tradition. Getting back to the songs themselves, I express my admiration for the non-linear songwriting she has steadily perfected. Is she averse to a verse and refrain, I wonder, or is it simply experimentation? Does she see herself going further down that particular avenue into more experimental song forms? “Yeah, I’d like that. I like songs to be collage-y, made up of different parts and not necessarily including a chorus. I mean, there’s a couple of choruses on the new record but for the most part I get in and say one thing and then it’s gone. Those are the songs I tend to like, I think they have more emotional weight.”

She hesitates slightly on the last word, perhaps a little wary of sounding pompous, and that’s one of her most endearing qualities. Neko has gone on record several times to state that she has little interest in eulogising herself to the masses or to get up there on a pedestal. “I’m not out to become Faith Hill,” she once said. “I never want to play an arena and I never want to be on the MTV Music Video Awards, much less make a video with me in.” Neko believes that music should be accessible to all and that people shouldn’t covet what they see and are sold on their MTVs and their VH1s, but that they should be inspired by what they hear, get out there and make some music of their own. “I learnt this thing from my favourite early Queen records,” she says. “There’d be these four minute songs, really great songs, and then quite late on there’d be this seamless, incredible melody and you’d think ‘woah, I didn’t think it could get any better!’ and it would freak you out. But you’d only get to hear it one time and you’d be thinking that’s the most incredible hook ever. The restraint not to use it throughout the whole song is just amazing. So you’d just go back and listen to the song over and over. I thought that was a really powerful thing.” And sure enough, one listen to Hold On, Hold On reveals what Neko refers to as her “Freddie Mercury moment.”

Such insights reveal yet another aspect of similarity between Neko and the Fox Confessor — both are incessant observers. Reportedly carrying a tape recorder with her at all times, Neko is well known among her friends for her incredible capacity to record and store in her memory snatches of even the most fleeting of conversations. For example, the lyrics to That Teenage Feeling, perhaps the most rousing of the new album’s songs, sprang from a late-night discourse on love between Neko and her guitarist Paul Rigby. But while Neko maintains that she herself doesn’t quite know exactly what that teenage feeling is, she’s recently fulfilled a lifetime ambition to have her own radio show, or at least the modern equivalent — the podcast. Didn’t you once say you hated the internet and that you were going to “get famous the old-fashioned way, one person at a time”, I ask. “Yeah, I was just being a smartass,” she smiles when asked. “I used to help my friend back in college with her radio show and it was really great fun. It’s one of those things where I guess I could get one if I tried but I’m never around. With podcasts you can do it in your own time and put it up on your website. I’ve done three shows so far and every show is kind of based around twenty songs. I sound like a complete idiot and some of the songs may seem a little stupid, but I try to give people a little information about them. Lately it’s been Canadian ladies I’ve been listening to… the Feist record and I love that Martha Wainwright album. Those ladies make me feel so proud and inspired.”

Canadian music is one of my current preoccupations so I ask her opinion on the question that’s been bugging me for ages. Is there a reason why we’re witnessing a real Canadian music boom at the moment? I mean, it’s not all that long ago since all we really heard about was Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Bryan Adams. Not to mention the fact that Candle In The Wind ‘97 was in the Canadian Top 20 for three ludicrous years. She shrugs, “I hadn’t really noticed. I guess I’ve been around the bands so long I already knew how great they all are. Oh wait, that makes me sound like I’m trying to be cool, but I just love Canada so much that I’m always aware of what’s going on musically because I think great music comes out of there. If you think about Canada though, it’s the largest country in the world so I think perhaps regionally they’re having a bit of a boom and I guess that people could encapsulate that as Canada in general. The regions are pretty different!” she trails off laughing. “I don’t know what my point is!”

Of course, Neko herself has played her part in the recent success of Canadian bands, receiving many an accolade for her role as a transient member of the New Pornographers. Does she find singing with the band a liberating experience, being able to play outside of her usual ‘sound’, especially given her background in the Seattle underground punk rock scene? “Yeah, it’s liberating not to have to write the songs too!” she grins. “It’s nice to be in band where you’re just a member of the band and you’re not responsible for everything. I’ve always written the songs in all the other bands I’ve been in. This is the first band where I don’t, basically, and that’s nice because I don’t have to worry about it. Dan and Carl are two of my favourite songwriters so I’m honoured that I actually get to sing the songs at all. No worrying, you just show up and there’s a great song written for you and you get to feel like a queen for a day, like “oh, that’s for me, thank you!”

No one could really call them alt-country and get away with it could they? She grimaces, “Nobody likes alt-country. Country-noir is not so bad. At least it doesn’t take itself away from country. Everybody I know and play music with loves country music so whoever made up alt-country did a horrible disservice. It’s unnecessary because it’s not like someone’s gonna pick up one of my records and one of Shania Twain’s records and say ‘which one should I get?’... I mean, that’s just not gonna happen.” She rolls her eyes and laughs, “A lot of people mistake me for Canadian though. I don’t mind, I love Canada.” Indeed, Neko has another Canadian side project in the shape of The Corn Sisters, an old-time country duo she formed with Vancouver resident Carolyn Mark. After a number of successful shows, they released a live record, their first and only to date, in 2000. Are there any plans to make a second album I ask, perhaps a little too hopefully. “Well the thing about that is we’ve forced Kelly Hogan to be in the band with us so we’ve been doing a lot of touring together. We do like eight shows a year together, and we’re all so busy that we haven’t been able to figure out what we would do if we did an album, but we really want to,” she nods. “We have a lot of fun.”

Certainly, Neko’s rave reviews don’t stop at her studio output. As The Tigers Have Spoken showed with conviction and as many a fan would attest, Neko is a natural live performer with real command of her material, her vocals and her fawning audience. “When a person makes a record, it’s not the same as when a person buys the record and listens to it,“ she explains. “I mean, you work your butt off on it, you spend months in a studio or however long it takes and you listen to every sound thousands of times, so it’s the kind of thing where when you make the record that’s the record to you and when it’s out you don’t listen to it anymore. And then it becomes about the live show and meeting your audience in the middle, because your audience interprets the record. You get together and you have this great night and that becomes the record to you.”

I open my mouth to say something gushing about what a wonderful way of looking at things that is, but her press officer appears to let us know that the reporter from The Sun (yes, really!) is here for the next interview. Time for one last question then; if she could ask for any miracle, no matter how small, to restore some of that all-important lost faith, what would it be? She sighs a little, “That’s such a large question… <pause> man, if I had that answer… <long pause> well, George Bush would have to work at McDonald’s, not as a manager that’s for sure. He’d have to be the fry cook. And he’d have to know what it meant to want so, you know, the whole reformation of the American government would be a good start!”

Fox Confessor Brings The Flood is in the shops now!