Case / Lang / Veirs
(ANTI)
Four stars
When KD Lang, one of the finest singers of her generation, emailed Neko Case and Laura Veirs asking whether they would like to make an album together, Case and Veirs immediately responded in the affirmative.
Warp and Weft, the 2013 solo album from Veirs which featured guest appearances by Lang and Case, was something of a dress rehearsal, and now comes Case / Lang / Veirs, a three-way songwriting summit that is utterly devoid of flab or filler.
Many of the album’s 14 songs clock in at under three minutes, and every subtle, beautifully realised arrangement is a knowing exercise in economy and taste.
With its strings, woodwind and twanging, reverb-drenched guitars, the record was produced by Veirs’s partner, Tucker Martin (My Morning Jacket; Sufjan Stevens), in Portland, Oregon, where Veirs and Lang both live. Some of it was recorded in Veirs and Martin’s loft, a room affording inspirational views of Mount St Helens, the active volcano.
It is fitting, perhaps, that this record of tangible sisterly fellowship should include Song For Judee, Veirs's heartfelt, cello-imbued nod to 1970s singer-songwriter Judee Sill, a woman whose ill-starred, turbulent and somewhat unsung career ended when she died of a drug overdose aged 35.
Elsewhere, the buoyant and pretty I Want To Be Here is also mindful of another's adversity: "A friend is an artist / Doesn't fit in / Lost a front tooth / Can't keep a job / But the things you make / Are so beautiful / They bring me joy / Don't you ever stop."
Neko Case picks up the lead vocal baton on Delirium, a prowling, country-rock gem with tubular bells and a soaring chorus hook, while Lang's jazzier vocal sensibilities propel the exquisite, beautifully-weighted ballads Blue Fires and 1000 Miles Away.
With its intricate, shuffling drum groove and references to William Blake's Songs Of Innocence and Experience, the brooding, Case-led Down I-5, is also compelling – a meditative driving song with a strange, hypnotic pull.
The downside of naming an act after its members' respective surnames is that they can end up sounding like a firm of a solicitors – but there is nothing drab or mundane about Case / Lang / Veirs. From vocal harmony-rich opener Atomic Number through to the stripped-down charms of Behind The Armory, this is the sound of three women inspiring each other.
Few collaborative debuts manage such consistently strong songwriting, such impressive unity of purpose.
artslife@thenational.ae
