If this means claiming Neko herself for conservatism, forget it. She’s solidly liberal. Anyone who’s read or heard enough of her interviews would know that. Remember that the left/liberal folk music crowd also often have a “traditional” feel.
Not that Neko’s necessarily “folk” but my point is that “tradtional” styles do not a political conservative make.

Appreciate her music for artistic merit, but trying to claim her for conservatism is like when Reagan tried to use Mellencamp’s and Springsteen’s songs for his campaigns.

But politically speaking, traditionalist != conservative.

Culturally speaking either, for that matter.

If you guys are all about aligning the two, my hat is off to you. But you have your work cut out for you.

I know the diva-ine Case so far primarily through her work with The New Pornographers, which is enough in itself to justify my blogger’s claim last year that she has the power to turn knees to Jell-O. That and the fact that no one in the world – with the exception of Emily Haines of Metric, another dynamite Canadian act – honors a pair of jeans or slacks, or just strategically-draped guitar (or tambourine), like she does, as the shots therein reveal.

Have a listen sooner rather than later to her work with the NPs courtesy of the vast New Music Canada free database at CBC Radio 3*,

*Try the Sandy Denny-like “These Are the Fables”, for starters, along with her lovely backing work, alongside Kathryn Calder, on such other tracks therein as the driving rocker “All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth”, the sardonic NYC travelogue “Myriad Harbour”, the dreamily symphonic “My Rights Versus Yours”, “The Bleeding Heart Show” a rousing stand-up-and-cheer anthem you’ve heard a hundred times when it backed a TV advert for an online university, “Mutiny, I Promise You”, a bouncy, Farfisa-laden, supremely gloom-vanquishing track: oh, hell, just hit “Play All Tracks”, here them now, thank them later…

- which, like The Verge on XM 87, is the go-to place for the golden age of indie pop coming from up north this last decade. One band after another – they’re really doing yeoman’s work up there.

For a good glimpse of the visual side of Neko’s work with the NPs, honored slacks included, see the video the band made for “Mutiny, I Promise You” – and cease to wonder why the ears and eyes alike of some of us swoon daily whenever our friends from above the 45th parallel tune up: “Every day feels like 1966.” - DSL., Alexandria.