A Special Case

"Set Out Running," the opener, establishes the album's you-done-me-wrong tone: "Want to get it all behind me," she cries over a slow, driving beat. "You know everything reminds me/I can't be myself without you, want to crawl down deep inside/The springs in my mattress will cry my dirty secrets/'Cause I just can't shake this feeling that I'm nothing in your eyes." In "Guided by Wire," Case bemoans her pathetic love life ("I could never choose the ones to love/And the ones who took the credit left me reeling") while giving praise to music for helping her get through the bad times. "No Need to Cry," a dreamy torch song, sounds like a long-lost Patsy Cline record. "Thrice All American" is Case's heartfelt ode to Tacoma: "I want to tell you about my hometown/It's a dusty old jewel in the South Puget Sound/Where the factories churn and the timber's all cut down/And life goes by slow in Tacoma."

Furnace Room Lullaby may not be as twangy as The Virginian, but it's a richer, more sophisticated album, and it won high marks from a number of critics. Ann Powers of the New York Times included it on her end-of-the-year top-ten list and praised Case for "giving country a bloody punk heart." The Village Voice put the album at number 36 on its annual "Pazz & Jop" critics' poll.

Not surprisingly, the big labels have come a-courtin', a situation that has Case sounding a lot like Nancy Reagan: "You just say no. I'm too much of a control freak to go with the majors. I think it would kill me."

Indeed, Case remains loyal to Mint, which seems to have no interest in pigeonholing the singer stylistically. On the heels of Furnace Room Lullaby, the label released two widely divergent albums involving Case: The Other Women, a rollicking country album by the Corn Sisters -- Case and her friend Carolyn Mark -- recorded live at Seattle's Hattie's Hat restaurant, where Case once worked; and Mass Romantic, by the New Pornographers, which features Case and some of her Vancouver buddies doing Badfinger-style power pop. Meanwhile, Case is about halfway finished recording a new album with her Boyfriends, which this time around include several members of the eclectic Tucson band Calexico. The new collection is slated for release next April. To keep her fans satisfied, she's also put together a homemade solo album, recorded in her kitchen, called Canadian Amp. "It's kind of a love letter to Canada," she says, and features works by some of her favorite north-of-the-border songwriters. (Case is selling the disc on the road.)

So how exactly did the girl from Tacoma end up in Chicago? After The Virginian came out, Case moved to Seattle, where she quickly became part of that city's thriving music scene. But when the dot-com boom hit town, Case was kicked out of her apartment building so that it could be converted to high-price condominiums. "I have a lot of resentment toward Seattle for that," says Case, who packed her bags and moved to Chicago, where, when she's not on tour, she works as an animator by day and a bartender by night.

"I love it here," she gushes. "Seattle was a pretty soulless, money-grinding machine, so I got the hell out of there." In Chicago, Case has discovered the joys of Lake-effect snow. "It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It looks like glitter on the ground." She misses the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest, though. "Hell, yes! I love the Northwest, and I love Seattle as a city. I just don't like the politics there right now."

Case's Denver show will be her second appearance in the area: She performed at Fiddler's Green in 1998 as part of the Lilith Fair. This time around, she's hoping to hook up with an old friend from Tacoma who now lives in the Mile High City. "Could you put something in the paper about my friend Laura Woods?" Case asks nicely. "Tell her to come to the show! She was my best friend when I lived back in Tacoma, and she's totally responsible for getting me into lots of different music. She was the only other lady I'd met up to that point who was into collecting records and voraciously going to rock shows. And that kind of saved my ass. Laura Woods, where are you?"