Look for me (I’ll be around)

January 6, 2008 at 12:41 pm · Filed under life, music and tagged: angelo badalamenti, brooklyn, canada, indie rock, matador records, neko case, new pornographers

 I used to wake up with Neko Case’s strong voice, singing Mass Romantic. And she made my day. Who doesn’t want to be woken up by the “Sexiest Babe of Indie Rock”?

I had seen her perform that song in the Warsaw Bar, in NYC, with my rock buddy Carmen. There we were, rocking in Brooklyn, NY, with the beats of a Canadian band. So what? Sue me for being a rock girl, we said, and smiled endlessly.

Neko Case goes to the dark side, though, and that’s the reason I love her. While she makes my day with her New Pornographers songs, when she goes to the country roots and adds the black ingredient, and quotes Angelo Badalamenti as one of her influences. And in the same way that I needed to listen her Mass Romantic album every morning, I need her “Look for me (I’ll be around)” at night. Before I go to sleep, I want to know that even when it may not seem exciting the way those others do, I’m emotion, my devotion, and that you will need some day as I need you…

Will she be around too? She has been everywhere. Born in the state for lovers, raised in Tacoma, Washington, studied in Canada and moved to Seattle only to find out that the grunge capital wasn’t being nice to the local musicians, she moved then to Chicago and after that she has been touring with different musicians, like The New Pornographers.

I go to the dark side too. We all do. And if we don’t go on tour, we travel. And if we don’t travel, we build shelves around us that are so closed we can’t even hear the waves of our enviroment. And that’s why I like Neko Case. Because she can promise to be around, and then leave. She can believe or not in forever, and still smile on stage. I smile on stage everyday, I make jokes to my audience too. Because in life, we are all artist on tour, showing what we’ve done and not who we are, hoping to find the connection that we need, to feed ourselves with the others, to make a song that we will want to share with everyone. And we hold out for that teenage feeling.

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