The cover of Neko Case‘s upcoming album, Hell On, depicts the songwriter literally on fire, flames and smoke billowing from her shoulder as she wears a wig made of cigarettes. (A reference, perhaps, to the blaze that consumed her Vermont home last year.) But that evidently wasn’t enough heat for Case, who confessed, midway through her set at Littlefield NYC on Wednesday night, that the room was stifling because she’d asked to have the air-conditioning turned off beforehand.
“It makes the instruments all f—ed up,” she said of AC. Since this small-club prelude to a tour of festivals and big theaters was being taped for radio broadcast, she could be forgiven for ranking pristine sound above the comfort of fans who had filled the house to capacity. That great sound continued, though, well after she relented and called for the return of climate control.
Case led the set with “Man,” a standout on her most recent record, 2013’s cumbersomely titled The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You. But then it was straight to songs that were new to the crowd, some of which she’d never performed before. She claimed to be a bit shy about their debut — that got a reflexive “awww” from some fans — and compared the nervousness to coming out in a prom dress for the big dance. (Cue her jokey, half-voice singing of the Dirty Dancing theme “The Time of My Life.”)
She needn’t have been nervous, as the songs felt immediately at home. “Last Lion of Albion” married a classic Case melody to lyrics linking the history of commerce to centuries of extinctions. On the song’s title track, the room’s attention tangibly narrowed to Case’s voice, which informed listeners that “God is not a contract or a guy,” but rather a “tide,” a “fire,” a “rage” making the future uncertain.
Case continued with the sad “Halls of Sarah,” which is adorned with a warm saxophone on disc but wasn’t here; “Bad Luck”; and “Curse of the I-5 Corridor,” a Hell-On standout whose narrator who talks of bad choices made on the road and recalls “I was so stupid then.” (Mark Lanegan duets on the disc, but here Case went it alone.)
It was after this soul-baring new song that Case motioned off-stage to get the temperature turned down. Between the next two songs, and in several breaks after that, she traded comically gross banter with guitarist Rachel Flotard about the amount of sweat rolling down their backsides. Flotard, who doubles as Case’s manager, clearly has a rapport with her boss, and matched her swampy imagination beat for beat.
Fans who were feeling suffocated and snuck out early missed a few old favorites alongside more Hell-On tracks: “This Tornado Loves You,” an especially well-received “Hold On,” and “Loretta,” an vintage cut by the Nervous Eaters that Case covered on her 2004 live album The Tigers Have Spoken. After that Chuck Berry-inflected rocker, the band took their leave — without an encore, perhaps because Case and company were eager to get out of sweaty clothes and drink something cold.