Neko Case @ Central Park Summerstage – 7/20/07

The first time I saw Neko Case perform was with The New Pornographers on the Twin Cinema tour and the absolutely pathetic sound engineering at the North Carolina venue which shall not be named, I could barely hear her (or Carl Newman for that matter) over the guitars. Why do you think people go to New Pornographers shows? Harmonies! Insanely disappointing night. This had been the first opportunity I’ve had to see her on her own since falling in love with Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and since the summer concert series at Central Park is FREE FREE FREE – um, hell yes I’m gonna go. And as soon as she belted out the first note of the first song, I knew that this concert would be a lot better.

Crossing Central Park meant missing her opener Eric Bachmann, but Case made sure to alternately thank and poke fun at the Archers of Loaf alum periodically throughout the night. In fact, she poked fun at many things over the course of the night including mapquest (which she thanked for their late arrival) and the people standing in the front who wanted her to stop talking and just play something (to which she responded that she wasn’t so sure she wanted to, now.) There was also a lot of talk about food and some rather amusing introductions to her songs, my favorite being a discussion of just what kind of old car “That Teenage Feeling” made her think of. I love her deadpan sarcasm.

More than that, however, I love hearing that her voice is just as powerful and beautiful live as it is on her albums, if not more so. It was hard for me to do anything but just stop and stare in awe. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case with everyone. Halfway through the show, we headed closer to the exit so that we could make a quick escape and run to The Fillmore at the end of Neko’s set and found that many of the other people around us were equally as enthralled with the beer stand and the person on the other end of their cell phone as with the siren onstage.

Still, we weren’t the only ones who decided to forego a better spot for an area near the exit. See, Neko had a lot of rather young, vocal…I’ll say it…screechy…female fans standing near the stage. I could hear them from my post by the exit and one woman who showed up early decided she’d rather hear them from the area by the exit than in the orchestra pit right next to them. As such, I wasn’t the only one in the back who was enthralled by the final songs of her set. She’d been doing a great Fox Confessor heavy set sprinkled with older favorites like “Hex” and “The Tigers Have Spoken” but the last couple songs were just absolute gold. She played “Star Witness,” “I Wish I Was the Moon,” “Deep Red Bells,” and finished off with “Hold On, Hold On,” one of my favorite songs released last year.

I had to run out before the encore since I had a ticket to a show that I’d actually paid for, but I’d never felt so relaxed and calm as I rushed toward the subway. It was a beautiful feeling.