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Happy Autumn Equinox.
I can't be the only person out there who thinks there should be more vids to Neko Case's songs. No, let me correct that: I can't be the only person out there who knows there need to be more. There really do.
I only know of two vids with her music, one of which I commissioned and one of which I stumbled over by chance. (For those of whom that knew about that vid and didn't tell me about it, you're On Notice.) I admit my preexisting bias towards her music, and the possibility that there aren't many vids of her work is because most people that make vids don't know of her work. This is, for me, a terrible shame. Not simply because I love her work and wish more people did too, but also because I think her stuff is ripe for vidding. Not necessarily her earlier pieces, like Dreaming Man or Timber, which are pleasant enough and sung very well, but newer ones, like Furnace Room Lullaby or Things That Scare Me or The Tigers Have Spoken or John Saw That Number or At Last or Maybe Sparrow or The Pharaohs or Red Tide. Songs with more emotion in them than some bands' entire careers. And who else out there writes songs about tigers and sparrows and killer whales?
Even when she's using a fairly ordinary phrase - "And if I knew then what's so obvious now/you would still be here" in The Needle Has Landed - the power she gives to her work is a glorious thing that elevates the songs from trite recitation to deeply personal pieces that belong to Case and Case alone. She has the ability to say old things in new ways, which is valuable in any medium: I don't think there's another singer that could pull off a song with the lyrics "The next time you say forever/I will punch you in your face".
I say her stuff is ripe for vids not only for the emotional content in her work but her ability to write lyrics. It's pretty amazing to see how far she's progressed and matured as a writer in a fairly short period of time, which is part of what keeps me listening to her: it's genuinely exciting to wonder where she's going to go next and how she'll talk about it. This Tornado Loves You floored me the first time I heard it - people can write themselves to death trying to say "I have waited with a glacier's patience." The same with Middle Cyclone: "Can't scrape together quite enough/to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love." She sings about beautiful, frightening, and ultimately fragile things - I've described her as sounding like she's afraid and knows it and is trying not to be.
I might be the only one out there wishing someone from Supernatural would take her work for a ride with any one of her songs about danger, death, or loneliness, or for someone from Battlestar Galactica to make a Baltar/Six vid to "This Tornado Loves You" and play on Cylons being a force of nature, or someone to try Furnace Room Lullaby to Dexter or any of a million possible things. I know her songs wouldn't work for every fandom, but right now with so little out there, I think she could work for almost any fandom.
And even if I was the only one out there before, I hope this post changed enough so that it's not just me anymore.
I only know of two vids with her music, one of which I commissioned and one of which I stumbled over by chance. (For those of whom that knew about that vid and didn't tell me about it, you're On Notice.) I admit my preexisting bias towards her music, and the possibility that there aren't many vids of her work is because most people that make vids don't know of her work. This is, for me, a terrible shame. Not simply because I love her work and wish more people did too, but also because I think her stuff is ripe for vidding. Not necessarily her earlier pieces, like Dreaming Man or Timber, which are pleasant enough and sung very well, but newer ones, like Furnace Room Lullaby or Things That Scare Me or The Tigers Have Spoken or John Saw That Number or At Last or Maybe Sparrow or The Pharaohs or Red Tide. Songs with more emotion in them than some bands' entire careers. And who else out there writes songs about tigers and sparrows and killer whales?
Even when she's using a fairly ordinary phrase - "And if I knew then what's so obvious now/you would still be here" in The Needle Has Landed - the power she gives to her work is a glorious thing that elevates the songs from trite recitation to deeply personal pieces that belong to Case and Case alone. She has the ability to say old things in new ways, which is valuable in any medium: I don't think there's another singer that could pull off a song with the lyrics "The next time you say forever/I will punch you in your face".
I say her stuff is ripe for vids not only for the emotional content in her work but her ability to write lyrics. It's pretty amazing to see how far she's progressed and matured as a writer in a fairly short period of time, which is part of what keeps me listening to her: it's genuinely exciting to wonder where she's going to go next and how she'll talk about it. This Tornado Loves You floored me the first time I heard it - people can write themselves to death trying to say "I have waited with a glacier's patience." The same with Middle Cyclone: "Can't scrape together quite enough/to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love." She sings about beautiful, frightening, and ultimately fragile things - I've described her as sounding like she's afraid and knows it and is trying not to be.
I might be the only one out there wishing someone from Supernatural would take her work for a ride with any one of her songs about danger, death, or loneliness, or for someone from Battlestar Galactica to make a Baltar/Six vid to "This Tornado Loves You" and play on Cylons being a force of nature, or someone to try Furnace Room Lullaby to Dexter or any of a million possible things. I know her songs wouldn't work for every fandom, but right now with so little out there, I think she could work for almost any fandom.
And even if I was the only one out there before, I hope this post changed enough so that it's not just me anymore.