[rating=3.50]
While this initial edition of Peter Case’s archival efforts contains its share of the sharp contemporary folk (“Steel Strings #1”) and blues (“(Give Me) One More Mile”) that dominate his live shows these days, the greater portion of The Case Files demonstrates the genuine rock and roll swagger that Case first displayed with The Plimsouls (and still does when they reunite).
In that sense, this collection redefines Case’s solo work live over the years as the bulk of his studio work is in a more polished folk-rock than the feverish blues vein of “Give Me One More Mile” and the piano driven “Black Crow Blues” (which hearkens directly to his most recent album, 2010’s Wig!) But there’s a definite logic to the sequencing of these dozen tracks, evident in the juxtaposition of the aforementioned track with the percussive “Let’s Turn This Thing Around” (further echoed in the half-spoken “Ballad of the Minimum Wage”) and the subsequent “Anything (Closing Credits);” the topicality of the former tune is universal enough to apply to any age, while the latter is equally pertinent to personal affairs as well as socio-political ones.
The urgency in Case’s best work, such as the singing on “Kokomo Prayer Vigil,” doesn’t preclude finding kindred spirits in other gifted songwriters, so he and his band bash out Alexandro Escovedo’s “The End” with as much panache as they apply to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ “Good Times Bad Times,” thereby doing as much justice to his roots as The Rolling Stones were doing to theirs, with an equally vintage arrangement of acoustic guitars, barrelhouse piano and blues harp.
Superficially more off-handed than it really is–see rush of credits the artist himself denotes on inside sleeve as well as the CD’s subtitle ‘A collection of demos, outtakes, live tracks and other rarities’–The Case Files works equally well as an introduction to this intelligent musician’s work (for those not familiar with him) or an accurate cross-section of his solo career (for those fans who have the larger portion of his discography). In either case (sic), don’t stop here.
