Neko Case
The Tigers Have Spoken
(Anti-Records)
There was one glaring flaw in releasing The Tigers Have Spoken. As a rule, live albums are pretty bad. For everyone but the teeming fans who flock to their artists' every recording, the studio albums are the ones that matter. Since 2002's Blacklisted, people have been looking for a new release from the honey-throated, alt-country torch singer Neko Case. With that pragmatism in mind, The Tigers Have Spoken will do. And, even considering that all but one of the songs on Tigers had never before been recorded by Neko Case, it just can never be the album Anti-Records promote it as-an album as urgent as her studio work.
This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of good stuff on her newest album-just that, like most live albums, it fails to be more than a gift to her faithful. The Tigers Have Spoken doesn't have the intimacy or sheen of Unplugged in New York, or the live show energy of Folsom Prison. The Tigers Have Spoken will be a great commercial for Case's upcoming album six months down the line, or alternatively, a fine complement to her career best, Blacklisted.
Blacklisted's success came from Case's husky voice. Her singing rivals country greats; on her better days she could out-sing Patsy Cline. But her execution of songs has always been far better than her songwriting. Even on an album as brilliant as Blacklisted, the highlight came from a heart-tearing cover of the Aretha Franklin song \Running out of Fools."" The fact that almost half of Case's songs are covers on The Tigers Have Spoken never seems to get in her way. She has that classic quality of country singers, the ability to play someone else's song as her own.
Tiger's rambling version of ""Wayfaring Stranger"" is particularly gripping, as are the two new songs Case wrote for the album, the R.E.M.-tinged ""If You Knew,"" and the sprawling title track. The Toronto concert this album was recorded from seems like it would have been great, but most of the songs seem lessened by the live recording.
The Tigers Have Spoken is the outlier in the Neko Case catalogue; it is filler to pacify fans rather than a legitimate new work. Case had gone into this record with a streak of two great albums. The Tigers Have Spoken isn't substantial enough to count as the album which ended the run.
