Maybe theres a yin-yang balance thing happening with Neko Cases career. It seems the more obscure her album titles become, the more famous she gets. Her last two, The Tigers have Spoken and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, turned her from a second-stage singer-songwriter (except to those who knew better) to a major name on the Americana music chart. While her solo career gives her a vehicle for channeling country influences through her impassioned, seriously honest voice, her other project, the punk-pop New Pornographers lets her visit the other end of her stylistic spectrum. It makes sense: if anyone could be identified as insurgent country (the original Bloodshot Records moniker for what we now call Americana), its this red-haired Virginia girl with hints of Appalachia in her voice and balladry, and total authenticity in her delivery. Her sometimes dark musical tales have inspired the description, country noir; oddly enough, however, she didnt spend very long in any remotely Appalachian area. Case grew up in Tacoma and wound up on the Sea-Tac punk scene before heading to Canada for art school, then back to Seattle, and finally to Chicago. As the Live From Austin, TX CD and DVD of her 2003 Austin City Limits performance prove, she knows how to beguile with a high note, a guitar strum, a quirky twist of phrase and a directness that belies those seemingly nonsensical speaking-animal album titles.