Pitchfork

At the end of "Train From Kansas City"-- a track on Neko Case's new live album, The Tigers Have Spoken-- a lone voice, low and slightly garbled, yells "We still love you!" It's unclear what Case had done to warrant the "still"-- perhaps a gaffe earlier in the show-- but amid the between-song chaos this declaration goes unanswered if not completely unnoticed. It's difficult to believe that Case isn't used to such public pronouncements of affection and devotion by now; you could tape any of her live shows and probably hear someone scream something similar.

Case is beloved-- and for good reason. Her voice is a forceful instrument that sounds modeled on an array of songstresses from Patsy Cline to Aretha Franklin to Linda Lyndell to Kate Pierson. It seems to convey a distinct personality-- lonely and pained yet strong-willed and defiant. And despite the purposefully rough sound of The Tigers Have Spoken-- only one acoustic guitar line was overdubbed-- her voice sounds clear and confident, as sturdily engaged with the music as she seems to be with individual members of the audience.

The Virginia native has also garnered an affectionate fan base through her easy mastery and lax definitions of many styles. As a result, Case's songs sound steeped in history but never beholden to it. A former drummer in various Vancouver punk bands, she caught the tail end of the alt-country movement with her solo debut, The Virginian, and snagged more listeners with her follow-up, Furnace Room Lullaby. But it was Case's third album, Blacklisted, that revealed the scope of her talents: On that LP she moved from vintage torch-and-twang and otherworldly blues to sweet soul music and plain old rock'n'roll. Not only did she manage to tie everything together into a cohesive whole without sounding distracted or hesitant, she ultimately turned that collection of admittedly lackluster songs into a calling card by making these genre jumps seem natural and largely invisible.

The Tigers Have Spoken crams all those sounds and more into a mere 35 minutes. Instead of regurgitating a set list of already available tracks, the album-- which was recorded at shows in Toronto and Chicago-- includes new originals, covers, live staples, and rarities. Case's frequent backing band, members of The Sadies, nimbly follow her from song to song and style to style. They cover Loretta Lynn's "Rated X" with almost note-for-note faithfulness, yet manage to generate a go-go groove that is equally indebted to Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood. Similarly, on "Train From Kansas City", Case and The Sadies speed up the tempo of The Shangri-La's original, retaining the skipping snare drum but playing up the bittersweet inevitability of the train that carries the boy whose heart she must break.

Case's own songs shine as brightly as the covers. "If You Knew", which opens the set, is a desperate plea for a lover to abandon his vapid other woman, and it could be directed at a certain popular hotel heiress: "She spends her daddy's money/ And she drives her daddy's car/ But what's crazy is the way you think that's style." The short title track constructs a devastating metaphor about the end of relationships around the inability to reintroduce zoo-kept tigers into their natural habitat, but Case feels no need to overexplain: She lets the tigers speak for themselves.

Even better is "Favorite"-- its low, lost, lonesome sound recalls the title track from Furnace Room Lullaby. Originally on a 2000 Bloodshot Records sampler, "Favorite" sounds fuller and more desperate in this live setting as the beautifully grim imagery of the final verse ("Last night I dreamt that I hit a dear with my car/ Blood from its heart spilled out onto my dress and was warm") gives way to the spiraling banjo coda.

Case is a singer first and a songwriter second, and The Tigers Have Spoken is afflicted with the same malady as Blacklisted: Many of its songs are too short, clocking in under two minutes. "Blacklisted", for example, cuts off before the two-minute mark-- shorter than the studio version-- without fully exploring the implications of its title, and her cover of the Nervous Eaters' "Loretta" cuts off just as soon as it gets going. It's no surprise that the best songs here-- "Hex", "Train from Kansas City", and "Favorite"-- all exceed three minutes: They sound roomier and more lived-in.

The Tigers Have Spoken ends with two public-domain songs. The show-closing chorale "This Little Light of Mine" barrels along like a freight train, and "Wayfaring Stranger"-- the only track here not recorded during a club performance-- makes a dynamic encore. This version comes from Case's appearance at the ideaCity Conference in Toronto; accompanied only by banjo and acoustic guitar, she leads the conference attendees in a sing-a-long on the chorus. The sheer crowd of voices subtly undercuts the song's lonely rootlessness as Case invites everyone at the Isabel Bader Theatre home with her. Maybe that generosity is the reason so many people seem to love Neko Case: She loves them right back.