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: 11,900,000 +
YouTube Music: 620,000 +
Pitchfork's 200 Best Albums of the 2000's: #141

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 killed vulnerable young women in the area of Tacoma, Washington in the 1980's and 90's. Case, who was born in 1970, lived in Tacoma and fit the victim profile of because she was a troubled young woman who left home at 15 in order to escape 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, like how a detective would work a crime scene. Clinical.
  
  It's possible to think that a female singer would cover the subject matter with weeping sentimentality but that framing is entirely absent here. Case confronts the reality head on detailing the crime scene "speckled fawns graze round your bones", the victims bodies were left in forested areas, while also stating the indifference of the world "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]
  
  The media, likely instructed by the authorities, described the women and girls as prostitutes in an attempt to prevent the public from panicking. People thought that they themselves, or their loved ones, wouldn't be victims because the killer only goes for prostitutes. This dehumanised the victims and it also wasn't true. Some of the victims were prostitutes but some were teenagers who had ran away from home and fell on hard times.
  
  
• Neko Case has pipes. You can hear the full power of her voice when she lets rip on the chorus. It's even better on the live version.
  
  
• Case is credited as helping to popularise the sub-genre of "Country Noir" or as it's also know "Gothic Country". The style paints the American south as a place of peril inhabited by deeply flawed eccentrics who roam the corn fields long after decent folk have called it a night. The genre is violent and nightmarish, covering subjects such as murder and alienation with a devilish smile.
  
  It's far from your typical country fare. It's much darker but also, in some ways, more real. It's mainstream country's weird kid sister who picks the wings off flys but who you'd want on your side in a fight.
  
  The genre was never really hot but according to rateyourmusic.com saw a mini-boom in the late 2010's. In 2002, when Case's 'Blacklisted' came out, there were only 20 albums classed as gothic country, while there were over a hundred released each year between 2016 and 2019. Many of the works have Case's influence written all over them.
  
  
  

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