Wild Creatures

Since making a quietly auspicious solo debut on 1997s The Virginian, Neko Case has firmly established herself as one of the singular artists of her time, creating a body of work that never fails to impress with her silky but bold vocals, her inventive melodic sense, her atmospheric and evocative arrangements, and lyrics that are deeply personal and artful while also being powerfully direct and emotionally forceful. A quarter century after her debut, if any artist was deserving of a quality best-of album, its Neko Case, and shes offered her own idiosyncratic version of the career-overview compilation with 2022s Wild Creatures. Wrapped up in gorgeous, playfully ominous artwork from Laura Plansker and featuring liner note contributions from the likes of David Byrne, Jeff Tweedy, Shirley Manson, and Rosanne Cash (not to mention Susan Orlean and Mayim Bialik), Wild Creatures offers 22 carefully chosen tracks picked from 2000s Furnace Room Lullaby through 2018s Hell-On (but skipping the 2016 collaborative effort case/lang/veirs), with the torchy, chaotic, and previously unreleased "Oh, Shadowless" included as a bonus. The music on Wild Creatures may have been recorded over the space of 20-plus years, but it plays with the assurance and sense of purpose of a real album. While many different moods ebb and flow throughout its running time, Cases voice and vision are at center stage throughout, and its a remarkably satisfying listening experience. At a time when the template of an empowered female vocalist usually involved forcing their grit and over-emoting up and down the scale, Neko Case showed how much she could communicate with her subtle but perfectly punctuated phrasing, her razor-sharp intelligence and dark wit, and her ability to convey a broad range of emotions and ideas with her smooth but fearless delivery. Neko Case is the Meryl Streep of modern pop vocalists -- her expressive range feels limitless, she makes her brilliance look easy, and the joy of her delight in her craft is there without calling attention to herself. Wild Creatures is a deeply satisfying sampling from her first 25 years, and its hard not to believe (or hope) she has another 25 this good still in her. ~ Mark Deming