Case's sexy voice carries new album

Neko Case, or her producers, seem dead-set on making you realize that she has a fabulous voice. On her new album, Blacklisted, her voice sits amongst voluminous amounts of reverb and echo. All of this is used to make her voice sound as sweltering and sexy as possible, and it works. Her bare midriff portrait on the cover makes a nice visual companion for the disc. \nIt's sort of easy to be cynical about the production techniques; they're cheap, but they are tried and true. Daniel Lanois used it to make Bob Dylan sound like death on 1997's Time Out of Mind, and last year's Kelly Hogan record, Because It Feel Good, is nearly identical to Blacklisted. But really, this modus operandi dates back to Sun Studios, so -- let it go!\nCase hardly has to rely on her voice to carry her albums -- she's a fine songwriter. Her songs are not hook-heavy, but they're more in tradition with Motown or Brill Building songwriting. Her sophisticated melodies and consuming vocals nearly render her lyrics superfluous, but rest assured that they are not vapid.\nOn Blacklisted, Case sounds like the channeled spirit of Dusty Springfield backed by Scotty Moore and Bill Black. Additional room is key, and the musicians have plenty of room to move around. The instrumentation is kept back in the mix, so when someone takes a solo it is as startling as hearing a pay phone ring -- imperial and forlorn. \nCase remains tied to that burdensome genre of alt-country, but despite a banjo or a pedal-steel here and there, there is nothing particularly country about Blacklisted. Genres are for creeps and a ridiculous waste of time anyway. Besides which, the best artists never remain firmly in one camp or the other. At the end of the album is the sound of television and dead air, and take that as a sign of what the truth is, all of this is merely part of the stratosphere.