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Track Listing 1. Favorite 2. Outro With Bees 3. Behind the House 4. Ghost Wiring 5. Deep Red Bells 6. Knock Loud 7. Hex 8. Maybe Sparrow 9. Wayfaring Stranger 10. Furnace Room Lullaby 11. In California 12. Buckets of Rain 13. Look For Me (I'll Be Around) 14. Alone and Forsaken
Album Notes Personnel: Neko Case (vocals, guitar); Kelly Hogan (vocals); Jon Rauhouse (guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo); Tom V. Ray (bass instrument). An appearance on the long-running PBS program Austin City Limits works as an alt-country equivalent to playing the Grand Ole Opry, helping to establish an artist's prominence in the rootsier outposts of country and folk. And while Neko Case was well on her way to becoming alt-country royalty long before her 2003 appearance on ACL, the 2007 release of that performance shores up Case's status as one of the finest country singers around, period. The set list is nearly evenly divided between covers and originals (most taken from her 2002 album, BLACKLISTED), but whether she's running through Dylan ("Buckets of Rain"), Hank Williams ("Alone and Forsaken"), her own songs ("Deep Red Bells" is a standout), or the work of her contemporaries (Catherine Irwin's "Hex"), it's her soaring vocals that garner the most attention. In fact, it's Case's voice that goes the furthest in doing away with the need to distinguish between various strains of country music, for her singing is as timeless as it is contemporary, and as hauntingly foreign as it is warmly familiar.
Industry Reviews 3 stars out of 5 -- [T]he stripped-down setting nicely illuminates her wondrous vocal instrument and canny readings.
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