Neko Case emphasized small details and natural experiences to delightful effect Thursday at Salt Shed. That approach extended to a pre-show request that fans watch the show through a “naked eye” and put their phones away — and the fact that the singer-songwriter and her band played without any visual backdrops or elaborate lighting.

Thanks to the large and compliant crowd, as well as Case’s arresting combination of poetic language and crystalline vocals, the results teemed with the kinds of vivid possibilities in many of her songs. The 55-year-old Virginia native created a fantasia that married the normal and the surreal, the expected and the bizarre. Crisp and clean, the 85-minute concert made bold, buoyant, full-throated statements about what it means to embrace surroundings and circumstances — and, per the lyrical thrust of her sweeping song “Destination,” “live a real life.”

It can be said that Case has been doing just that for the past several decades. Especially while engaged in numerous pursuits that explain the extended wait between new studio albums. She released “Hell-On” in 2018 and supported it with a tour, just a year after losing her 225-year-old Vermont farmhouse in a fire. Though she played dates in 2023 and 2024, including a stop at Salt Shed, the singer primarily spent the last few years focused on other matters.

Specifically, rebuilding her home, getting her recording studio up and running, and continuing work on a stage musical adaptation of “Thelma and Louise” with the screenwriter of the 1991 film. In her spare hours, she teamed with indie-rock collective the New Pornographers on a pair of records. And she penned an acclaimed memoir, “The Harder I Fight the More I Love You,” which became a best-seller upon release this past January.

“Neon Grey Midnight Green,” her new LP, was released last month.

Performing a half mile away from the Hideout, the cozy venue at which she once bartended, Case didn’t mention the book. But she referenced Chicago on multiple occasions, thanking everyone for treating her as family when she resided here and crediting the city’s people for instilling her with hope when she sees them “resisting fascism” on the news. She also briefly honored the rights of the gay and transgender communities. Case also provided local flavor on her 2006 song “Star Witness,” divulging that some of its narrative is tied to Humboldt Park.

Yet apart from veiled nods to cherished memories and fallen friends, Case didn’t seem concerned with nostalgia. She embodied a carpe diem attitude and manifested a lust for life, connection and imagination. Leave it to the dependably original singer to cast aside fear, grief and despair. Seldom if ever has she appeared onstage happier, or more assured of herself and place.

Neko Case performs at Salt Shed on Oct. 16, 2025. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Anchored by an abundance of material from “Neon Grey,” the set largely paid tribute to creatives and creatures that taught her lessons and provided inspiration.

Backed by a versatile five-piece band that counted longtime local staple Nora O’Connor among its crew, Case treated the arrangements with similar degrees of enchantment and unexpectedness. With her long red hair draped down her back, weight shifting from her left to right foot and back again, and one hand often shaking a tambourine or maraca, Case stood at the center of an aurora borealis of sound.

Sonically, songs touched upon twangy honky tonk, baroque pop, folk rock, jangle pop, psychedelia, gospel and, for good measure, prog. Though scaled-down in comparison to studio counterparts that feature a 20-piece chamber orchestra, her recent fare felt vast in scope and symphonic in the manner in which it built, flowed and ebbed.

The intermittent presence of a saxophone, mostly employed as an accent rather than a lead, expanded the textures and colors at Case’s disposal. As did her own use of various guitars, and proclivity toward rhythmic foundations that meshed electric and acoustic instrumentation.

Songs rarely followed straight-line paths, yet they never devolved into knotty art projects or meandering experiments. Melody and intricacy served as Case’s chief collaborators. They issued her a passport to explore sonic frontiers at will.

She welcomed the freedom. Her distinctive voice, practically unchanged by age and bathed in generous reverb, came across as if it rode on thermal updrafts blown above a mountain. It rippled with high-and-lonesome tones and seamlessly shifted between octaves in the same phrase. It expressed primal fierceness with the same passion that it channeled quiet tenderness.

Revealingly, Case opened with a rattling “Bracing for Sunday” and bookended it during the encore with an impatient “Hold On, Hold On.” Both found her championing a confident, rebellious persona and proud independence. Those same traits emerged amid the spiritual atmospherics of “Rusty Mountain,” spoken-word jazz vibes of “Tomboy Gold” and topsy-turvy curves of “Baby, I’m Not (A Werewolf”) — a bared-teeth tune Case introduced by praising the alleged superpowers afforded by menopause.

Neko Case performs at Salt Shed on Oct. 16, 2025. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

She blended sorrow and ennui with resilience (“Magpie to the Morning”) and gushed over the miraculous abilities of a spider  (“Little Gears”). Thematically, the latter complemented the hook-rich “People Got a Lotta Nerve” and country-laced “Lady Pilot” as clever observations about the power of nature and, indirectly, how humans keep forsaking such majesty in the names of technology, mechanization and progress.

“Why do people need to feel so important all the time?” Case sang, a hint of venom spraying off her tongue as she knocked homo sapiens down a notch or three. Why, indeed.

The fearless query echoes as one of the capital-Q questions of our immediate present. Case’s shared visions of living “a real life” will depend on how it’s answered.

Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.

Setlist from Salt Shed Oct. 16:
“Bracing for Sunday”
“People Got a Lotta Nerve”
“Louise”
“Deep Red Bells”
“This Tornado Loves You”
“Little Gears”
“Baby, I’m Not (A Werewolf)”
“Ragtime”
“Magpie to the Morning”
“I’m an Animal”
“Destination”
“Lady Pilot”
“Oh, Shadowless”
“That Teenage Feeling”
“Rusty Mountain”
“Match-Lit”
“Neon Grey Midnight Green”
“Tomboy Gold”
“Wreck”
“Star Witness”

Encore
“I Wish I Was the Moon”
“Hold On, Hold On”
“At Last”

 

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/17/review-neko-case-salt-shed-2/