Neko Case - Deep Red Bells

Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag, past empty lots and early graves?

Album: Blacklisted [3rd album]
Recorded: Tuscon, Arizona & Cotati, California
Genre: Country, Alt-Country, Americana, Gothic Country
Album Release: August 20th 2002
Length: 4:04
Producer: Neko Case, Craig Schumacher & Darryl Neudorf
Vocalist: Neko Case [age 32]
Label: Bloodshot Records

Live from Austin, TX in 2017


Audio

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Ober 11 million
YouTube Music: Over 600 thousand

Credits

Drums, guitar [x4], standing bass, tambourine

Details

• 'Deep Red Bells' is a song about murder and was inspired by the grizzly events of the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, who slaughtered vulnerable young women in the area of Tacoma, Washington in the 1980s and '90s. Case, who was born in 1970, lived in Tacoma and fit the victim profile as she was a troubled young woman who left home at 15 in order to escape from substance abuse and the resultant deep poverty. The killers youngest victim was only 14 years old at the time of her death.
  
  The entire community of Tacoma must have been terrified knowing a prolific serial killer was operating on their doorstep, but it would have been worse for a person who fit the profile. It would have been worse for Neko. Ridgeway was found guilty of 48 murders in 2003, making him the second most prolific serial killer in American history. He claims to have carried out many more.
  
  Case takes all of those feelings, that dreadful terror and packages them into 'Deep Red Bells' as a way of exorcising a haunted part of her youth. The song starts by addressing the victims of Ridgeway directly, without going beyond mere description 'He led you to his hiding place.' It's matter of fact, but also detached, clinical, like how a detective works a crime scene.
  
  Other singers would cover the grim subject matter with a weeping sentimentality but that framing is entirely absent here. Case confronts the reality head on, detailing the crime scene with a forensic eye, 'speckled fawns graze round your bones'. The victims bodies were left in forested areas. Neko also comments on the indifference of a numb world too concerned with their own lives, 'Where does this mean world cast its cold eye?'
  
  

  'I grew up while he was killing women, and on the news, they never talked about them like they were women. They just called them 'prostitutes'.' (Neko Case talking to The A.V. Club)

  
  

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