Album: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Year: 2006
As it turns out, Neko Case’s live album, The Tigers Have Spoken was the end of the first phase of her career. When she came back in 2006 with Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, her music had changed: the new songs were simultaneously more expansive and more personal.
Expansive that her music went beyond the boundaries of alt-country, and personal in that she started going even deeper on the subjects in which she was interested.
Girl with the parking lot eyes
Margaret is the fragments of a name
Her bravery is mistaken for the thrashing in the lake
Of the make-believe monster whose picture was faked
Margaret is the fragments of a name
Her love pours like a fountain
Her love streams like a rage
Her jaw aches from wanting
And she’s sick from chlorine
But she’ll never be as clean
As the cool side of satin, Pauline
Pauline
So while I originally thought “Margaret Vs. Pauline,” the opening track of Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, was an update of Ray Davies’ immortal “Two Sisters,” it actually had its roots in a Richard Brautigan novel from 1968 called In Watermelon Sugar.
Two girls ride the blue line
Two girls walk down the same street
One left her sweater sittin’ on the train
The other lost three fingers at the cannery
Everything’s so easy for Pauline
For Pauline
For Pauline
I’ve never read Richard Brautigan, not even Trout Fishing in America, so I can’t tell you how much the central rivalry in the song tracks to the novel, though I can tell you that — according to Wikipedia — one of the main plot points of In Watermelon Sugar was that all of the tigers were killed.
And I can also tell you that with the sparse drumbeat, slowly strummed acoustic guitar, and aggressive piano playing by Band stalwart (and Miss Alans janitor) Garth Hudson, “Margaret Vs. Pauline” didn’t really have in precedent in Neko’s music.
Except of course when her bell-like voice trills out “Pauliiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnee,” which totally and utterly kills every single time.
“Margaret Vs. Pauline”
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