case/lang/veirs, Album review: ‘An album of rare beauty and intelligence’

Download this: ‘Atomic Number’

Proof that supergroups can be fruitful creative ventures

Most supergroup alliances either become tedious muso cutting-contests, or suffer the bruises of conflict and compromise. That’s not the case with this project, bringing together singer-songwriters Neko Case, k.d. lang and Laura Veirs, who somehow manage to negotiate the potential pitfalls of style and temperament fairly unscathed. The result is an album of rare beauty and intelligence, rendered in imaginative arrangements containing sometimes startling harmonies.

A large part of the success is down to the truly collaborative nature of the work, with all three participants involved throughout the process, from songwriting and arranging to performing. While it’s sometimes obvious whose initial idea is behind a song – Veirs’ elemental reflections, for instance, are clearly behind the likes of “Atomic Number” and “Georgia Stars”, while the aching torch-song “Blue Fires” surely originates in lang territory – the collective input impacts through things like the tart-sweet harmonies on the former, or the dramatic arrangement of horns and vibes with the intriguing guitar and harmony parts of “Greens Of June”.

There’s a sublime attention to sonic detail throughout, with the glistening, luminous high tones of the arrangement to “Honey And Smoke” providing the perfect complement to lang’s lead vocal, and the smeared, Oriental-style string tonalities of “Supermoon” offering a brilliant evocation of Case’s suggestion that “nature isn’t magic, it’s just a mystery to us”. Elsewhere, the late singer-songwriter Judee Sill’s renegade spirit is celebrated in a jazzy shuffle of cello and electric piano, while noodling woodwind and gentle sleigh bells lend a distinct Christmas flavour to “1000 Miles Away”.

The most moving moment of an almost faultless album, though, comes with “Why Do We Fight?”, where piano, glockenspiel and a low hum of strings reinforce strummed guitar, as lang ponders the painful mysteries of attraction: “Can a love make me so cruel, to lose my faith and lose my heart?”