Peter Case - Vanguard Visionaries (2007)

After parting ways with Geffen Records in 1992, ace singer/songwriter Peter Case signed with the venerable folk label Vanguard, where he released five albums between 1993 and 2002. In 2004, Vanguard released a fine compilation drawn from his tenure with the label, Who's Gonna Go Your Crooked Mile?, but three years later they've offered listeners a more compact summation of Case's work as part of their mid-priced Vanguard Visionaries series. While Case's Vanguard Visionaries feels just a bit scattershot, the ten songs are all solid -- eight written by Case, with two traditional blues numbers -- and they cover an admirable range of moods, from the telling atmospherics of "Spell of Wheels" to the rollicking street wisdom of "Coulda Shoulda Woulda" and the blues-infused shaggy dog tale of "Two Heroes." Though this sampler leans to the lighter side of Case's storytelling, "Breaking the Chain" and "On the Way Downtown" show he can dig into deeper themes with a compelling humanity, and the guy can sing every bit as well as he writes, which is no small accomplishment. Vanguard Visionaries is hardly an ideal introduction to Peter Case (or even the best overview of his Vanguard material), but this should be enough to convince the uninitiated that Case is an artist worth investigating, and offer a few clues as where to start looking through his catalog. © Mark Deming