RiffDraft

You know you really like a particular artist when you find yourself thinking, “This is my new favorite song by…” while you’re clicking to replay that song in iTunes. If nothing else, it means that artist is getting pretty heavy rotation. I thought that this morning for probably the fourth time since I started listening to Neko Case about four years ago.

This morning it was “If You Knew” from The Tigers Have Spoken. Besides the drum roll at the beginning, the hook that’s always drawn me is the climactic echoing wail at the end of the song where she’s admonishing,

“Cause if you knew what I know,
then you wouldn’t leave me.
You wouldn’t turn away from my love.
It’s what you said that you believed in.”

followed by the matter-of-factly stated,

“I say this as a friend.”

It was always simply the vocal quality that grabbed me before. It wasn’t until this morning that it really hit me what a bitter, jealous song it is. When you’re in a situation like the “narrator” in this song, you’re so self-delusional. She’s captured that poetic stance perfectly by screaming at the guy then saying, “I say this as a friend,” with such little emotion that you’re convinced she believes it herself.

That feat of song “authorship” makes it my favorite Neko Case song until I discover my next favorite Neko Case song.