Canadian Amp

VINYL FORMAT. In the liner notes to her Canadian Amp EP, Neko Case enthuses about the joys of home recording, "It's so much easier than I thought, and you can do it in your underwear!" As befits such an attitude, Canadian Amp sounds a good bit more casual and (pardon the expression) stripped-down than Case's two full-length albums, and the disc's emphasis on covers puts the focus squarely on her gifts as an interpretive singer rather than her impressive abilities as a songwriter (Case wrote only two of the EP's eight tunes and, except for Hank Willliams' "Alone and Forsaken," all the songs are the work of artists born and raised in Canada). Cut in Case's kitchen with a handful of friends pitching in (among them Andrew Bird, Jon Rauhouse, Tom Ray, Kelly Hogan, and Brett Sparks), Canadian Amp is purposefully sparse, with Case's voice front and center throughout.