Fox Confessor Brings the Flood is the fourth solo album by American alt-country musician Neko Case, released March 7, 2006 by ANTI- Records. The album was found on many “Best of” lists that year and had a bonus disc released by ANTI- in November of the following year.[12]
Recording and production
The album was recorded at Wave Lab Studios in Tucson, Arizona except the beginning of "John Saw That Number", recorded in a stairwell at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern; and "At Last", which was tracked at Toronto's Iguana studio. Case is backed by several collaborators, including bandmates Jon Rauhouse and Tom V. Ray, as well as frequent collaborators The Sadies, Giant Sand's leader Howe Gelb, vocalist Kelly Hogan, Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino, and Canadian cohorts Brian Connelly and Paul Rigby. Rachel Flotard of Seattle punk-pop combo Visqueen also guests, as does multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson of The Band. The album was engineered by Craig Schumacher and Chris Schultz, and produced and mixed by Neko Case and Darryl Neudorf. It sold 194,000 copies in the United States through December 2008.[13][needs update]Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Bonus Disc Version) was released November 6, 2007, which includes five additional songs. The original track listing was used for the Record Store Day 2015 re-release on red colored vinyl.[14]
Regarding a cover of "Star Witness" by Canadian students Kate Macdonald and Janelle Blanchard, Case wrote via Twitter "Wow. That just made me bawl my eyes out. What beautiful singers. I'm not worthy...Holy god. They broke the shit out of my heart!!"[16]
Musical style, writing, and composition
Upon its release, Fox Confessor was praised as Case’s most stunning album. The album covers a wide range of emotions in a variety of styles. Case blends gospel and early rock influences, and Case classified her style as “country-noir”.[17]
Much of the album is praised for masterful weaving of emotion and suggestive description. Case offers that the songs on this album were created by writing a lot of words and paring them back so that it is not “overly literal”. She gives hints and helps her listeners to use their imagination to fill in the gaps. “That Teenage Feeling” is praised as a 1950s-style pop ballad that suggests a memory of intense and passionate love,[18] while “Hold On, Hold On” tells the story of the artist leaving a wedding reception, relieved to be alone, with drugs from the bride. In “John Saw That Number”, Case mixes words of “an old American spiritual with a musical idea from India” [17] and “Widow’s Toast” is an example of the artist creating “more space on the record” in order to make what is there stand out. Case began recording the track with a full band, but the removed all components for the final product.[17] This track also deviates from the standard verse-chorus-verse structure of many contemporary songs.
Inspiration
Most of the songs in this album are based on her life experiences. Case said on one of her interviews "I've always been fascinated by fairy tales, But we really don't have fairy tales anymore. Movies have taken their place, and modern fiction seems to be in this rut of the coming-of-age story, which is getting really boring. I'm trying to find things on the outer limits of experience. I really love the Eastern European fairy tales because they're not only dark but they're also funny and not overly moral."[19]
Reception and legacy
Upon release, Fox Confessor was greeted with universal acclaim from music critics. Awarding it 4-and-a-half stars, AllMusic's Mark Deming lauded it as "rich, mature, and deeply satisfying".[2]Entertainment Weekly's Marc Weingarten praised the "beguiling spell" Case's "death-haunted folk".[4] Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork applauded the "natural grandeur" of Case's "peerless cries".[8]
In 2013, Treble dubbed Fox "[Case's] most haunting, lonely and dazzling work to date." They placed the album on their list of alt-country's essential records, praising its songs as "magnificent".[20] The site also recognized Fox's third track "Hold On, Hold On" in the genre's history, dubbing it "a haunted surf-twang barnburner".[21] Looking back on Fox for its 10th anniversary, Billboard's Kenneth Partridge named it "an indie-rock landmark" and "an album of ugly truths beautifully rendered."[22]
