Neko Case, Crooked Fingers - Newport Music Hall (last Thursday)

Singers with alt-country panache are a dime a dozen these days. Much of it is pretty, pleasant, safe and, to be honest, quite average. And I say that as someone who’s drawn to that stuff more than most.

On the surface, Neko Case doesn’t seem to have much that sets her apart from all the others in this loosely defined genre. She sings with vague country overtones that convey deference to the rich history of the American South, yet it’s subtle enough that an adjective like “twangy” would be jarringly inappropriate. Plus, her band incorporates lap-steel guitar, and Case herself often plays a four-string tenor guitar, an instrument long associated with country music (along with jazz and, later, folk).

And yet a Neko Case song is unmistakable, often executed with a brilliance that has rightly expanded her fan base far beyond the NPR-and-latte set. It all starts with her voice, which was in full force at the Newport last Thursday. One of my fellow reviewers has stated his disdain for Neko’s singing. To each his own, because I found Case’s bold, open-throated vocals a thing of beauty live, just as it is on record.

The Newport’s muddy sound system and generally talkative crowds don’t make for an ideal atmosphere in which to soak in all that good stuff, but it didn’t ruin the experience by any means. It did, however, make it difficult to decipher some of the words, which is a shame because her imagistic lyrics often get overlooked amid all the gushing over her voice.

“I Wish I Was the Moon,” a fan favorite from 2002’s Blacklisted, showed her sweet balladeer side, with the lonesome refrain “I’m so tired, I wish I was the moon tonight.” At the end of the set, “Dirty Knife” revealed a more disturbing side (“He laid down on the floor and he slept like iron/While the dirty knife worked deep into his spine/The blood runs crazy”). Both fit Case like a glove, effortlessly transitioning from pining to haunting.

The female backup vocalist filled out the sound nicely, though she was way too talkative between songs. Someone needs to remind her she’s a backup singer.

About halfway through the set, I got a little impatient for more Fox Confessor Brings the Flood tunes, but overall there was a pretty good mix of songs both new (“Middle Cyclone,” “People Got a Lotta Nerve”) and old (“Deep Red Bells”).

It’s rare to read anything about Case without mention of her long, red hair, and most of the press photos have only served to further her image as a sex symbol. But in concert Case came off like the farm girl that she is (she’s an animal lover with 100 acres in Vermont), devoid of anything diva. She even self-deprecatingly displayed her oddly shaped navel to the crowd, explaining that someone told her it looked like a dolphin.

Case excels outside the alt-country ghetto, too, adding her pipes to the New Pornographers, as well as guesting on a recent song by Crooked Fingers, who opened the show. Bandleader Eric Bachmann, who helmed influential mid-’90s indie darlings Archers of Loaf, suffered from a worse sound mix, but nevertheless played a good, short set that left me craving a full Crooked Fingers show.

While it’s doubtful that Archers of Loaf would have shared the stage with Case, Bachmann has become more entranced with folk structures and Springsteen since starting Crooked Fingers. (“Sleep All Summer” was a good example of the former, “You Can Never Leave” of the latter.) I missed the string and horn arrangements that a three-piece with keys and a half-kit couldn’t offer, especially on “Phony Revolutions,” but the songs still held up.

One thing, though. If you decide to play a song that, on record, is a duet with Neko Case, why wouldn’t you work it out so that she could come out and sing it live? What a missed opportunity.

(Also at The Other Paper)