The crowd filling the Lower Greenville room was not what anyone would call robust — between the balcony and the floor, the Granada was maybe a bit over half full Monday — but it was at least vocal and respectful in its appreciation. The kicker came as Case, just after 9 p.m., emerged from the curtain across the back of the stage, stepped to the microphone and said: “Thank you for coming out on a Monday — I’m gonna tell you the truth; I’m super sad today.”
There was the creeping sensation, as Case and her four bandmates (guitarist Carl Newman, drummer Joe Seiders, guitarist Paul Rigby and bassist-vocalist Nora O’Connor) launched into “I Wish I Was the Moon,” from her 2002 LP Blacklisted, that this might become a night to forget, rather than to remember.
Case is in the home stretch of a touring leg that’s lasted about a month, so it wasn’t hard to feel how acutely she leaned into “Moon” lyrics like “I’m so tired/I’m so tired.” But instead, something profound unfolded over the course of roughly 100 minutes — the audience stayed with her, shouting affirmations of love between songs, and largely adhering to the prerecorded request to “silence and put away [their] phone” and “experience [the concert] through a naked eye, not [their] screen.”
Neko Case's Case of the Blues
The effect was one of intense serotonin transference between the artist and the audience, a chance to collectively bathe in music’s ability to transcend bad weather, a shitty mood or whatever else looms outside the venue doors. Case’s initial greeting suggested the melancholic strain in her wonderfully indefinable catalog might be the focal point of the night. But by the time the encore rolled around, as cheers and hollers filled the air, it wasn’t difficult to feel as if Case had truly drawn succor from the audience. They filtered in and out of the main room, often disappearing only to return clutching freshly acquired vinyl or posters or T-shirts.“Thank you for cheering me up,” Case said as “Margaret vs. Pauline” dissipated behind her. “You guys are doing a great job.” Monday’s appearance was her first in North Texas in almost two years, following a June 2022 stop at the same venue. She’s ostensibly touring behind the 2022 compilation Wild Creatures — of the songs played Monday, 10 of them appear on Creatures — and allowed mid-set that she’s working on new songs.
“So, we’ve been working on new songs for a while,” Case said. “It’s way more fun to play them, than just saying, ‘We’re working on a new record.’” Although she played two of them, she offered no titles — some amateur internet sleuthing indicates “Little Gears” and “Wreck” as possibilities — but they were gorgeous in their infancy, of a piece with her peerless back catalog.
Elsewhere, Case laid into staples “Deep Red Bells,” “This Tornado Loves You,” “That Teenage Feeling” and the main set-closing freakout, “Oh, Shadowless” with characteristic verve and her indelible, multi-octave voice. Indeed, as she sang the gobsmackingly beautiful, countrified waltz “Hex,” in the concert’s latter half (with its lyric “My voice is all you’ll hear”), it wasn’t hard to connect the dots between all the disparate elements at play, and realize what had transpired: lightning lacing the sky outside with menacing energy, a force of nature mirrored only by the woman commanding the spotlight on the Granada stage; an audience whose size belied its fervent devotion to the music being made; an artist, for whatever reasons, just not feeling it; a fistful of expertly rendered songs, brimming over with feeling — what could have collapsed into a run-of-the-mill evening out instead became more than the sum of its parts, perhaps not achieving transcendence, but coming damn close.
“I don’t want this night to end,” a visibly cheered Case said, just before “Maybe Sparrow.” “It’s so great.” The feeling was mutual.
