Neko Case & Friends

The Read

The records are full of tornadoes, animals, and unreliable narrators, and the voice sits above all of it with a reverbed clarity that can flatten a room. She came out of the New Pornographers and a country-noir tradition and belongs entirely to neither. Her live shows are famously loose between songs — dry, profane, funny — and then absolutely precise once the count-in happens. The “& Friends” billing means guests, unannounced, which at the Ryman on the night before Halloween could go anywhere. The room is her natural habitat: a seated church where a voice like that does not need help. Expect at least one moment where the band drops out entirely. That is the one people will describe afterward.

The Room

Ryman Auditorium

116 5th Ave N

Built in 1892 as a tabernacle by river captain Thomas Ryman, who was converted at a Sam Jones revival — little did he know it would become the church of American roots music.