Where Casey Neill & The Norway Rats Become Our New Favorite Band
Seattlest was so tired last night, coming down with a cold we've been coming down with for a couple of weeks now, and hearing rumors of snow. All of this honestly made us just want to curl up under a thick blanket and watch the re-runs of Man Versus Wild that have been backing up on our TiVo. But alas, we had agreed to check out some band from Portland called Casey Neill and the Norway Rats. We'll be honest--the main draw for us was Jennie Conlee (the Decemberists). We had been so stoked about seeing the Decemberists and Laura Veirs next week, and then a Decemberist came down with some illness bad enough to make them cancel the tour (we hope they're okay!). This was going to be about as close to the Decemberists as we were going to get this year.
So off we went to the Tractor, hoping we'd be able to get in, hoping it wouldn't be too crazy-crowded so that we could almost-sneeze without being afraid of elbowing someone in the ribs, and most of all, hoping Neill could make it all worth our while.
We were sold by the end of the first song. That gave way to a series of tunes from their latest album, Brooklyn Bridge, which Neill explained is a collection of songs about New York. That city has, no doubt, inspired endless swaths of music, but Neill's tunes come from a very Irish punk-folk sensibility. Which is to say that they're thickly narrative, almost pleonastic numbers recounting those moments in history that nobody talks about. Take "Holy Land," for example. According to Neill's account, Water Street (near Pier 17 on the southeast end of Manhattan) was home to a brothel, next door to a dog and rat fighting pit/whiskey stowe. That's the sort of intriguing juxtaposition that seems innately dripping with literary value, and seems to exist only in places like New York. Songs like that are just hanging out waiting to be written, and Neill apparently has a knack for channeling them.
Live, the songs translate quite well. Neill is one of those singer/songwriters who really doesn't move much during his set, so it's good that he has a whole band behind him to give people something to look at. Conlee worked it as much as possible when she was standing up rocking the accordion. Lewi Longmire (electric guitar) kind of looks like like that bass-playing muppet, and plays the crap out of his instrument. Bassist Adam East is just a pretty, pretty man, joining Little Sue on backup vox, while drummer Ezra Holbrook rocks some serious drummer face. Aside from making it all worth watching, the band is incredibly tight and intuitive, leaving room for each instrument to take to the fore.
The sound at the Tractor is rarely perfect, and this time, that manifested on Conlee's accordion, which was mostly buried behind the louder, more electric instruments. The band collectively backed off every time she took a solo, almost leading us to believe that that's the way the song always works. Having seen enough bands that just play the way they usually do, quizzically furrowed brows eyeing the sound guy through such instrumental solos, hoping the problem fixes itself, it's always nice to see a band that just knows how to work around the occasional sonic imbalance.
It was a fairly short set (we really would've been happy to sit through another hour), but Neill's work managed to call to mind the Pogues, REM, Son Volt, Austin Lounge Lizards and several other bands we dearly love. But, by the time they started wrapping up with "Hooray For the Riff-Raff," and finally with the beautiful "Colville Blues," we were so glad we dragged ourselves all the way to Ballard, and even more glad that these guys live just two and a half hours down I-5. That just means they're bound to be back sometime soon.
