New music! Sometimes old music. Music that we love!

This week, I’m bringing an old track and a new track together to talk about my good friend Neko Case.

OK, “good friend” should be qualified a bit — she makes music and I connect to it on a personal level. OK fine, whatever, here’s something cool: She’s got one of the most consistent vocal sounds I’ve heard in a while, both in terms of her style and the recording itself. I find that reassuring and courageous — there’s no need to constantly try to reinvent something that’s clearly amazing. I feel like there’s a really solid engineer who identified early on where the spotlight should be, and has focused ever since on nailing the sound of her voice (clear, ringing, almost piercing, with a nice bit of slapback echo). A song I’m digging off her new album (titled The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You) is “Ragtime.”

Supplemental Reading: An older track I’ve always loved for that great vocal sound is “John Saw That Number” from 2006. (Please forgive the random slideshow of someone’s trip pictures.)

– Brook Reeder