Casalties Keep Piling Up For The Last Time...

The king is gone but he's not forgotten, this is the story of a Johnny Rotten Neal Casal. A small fanbase he might have had, too small one would argue, but loyal they are, so it is mighty fine to see that they will be served with an archival release these days, A compilation of early songs and demos, No One Above You (The Early Years 1991-1998) will be out in about tomorrow, so I thought it's time to get going and wrap up my archival series on Mr. Casal. Which means it's time to welcome Casalties 3, this volume covering Casal's career from about 2005 to this death in 2019 and the posthumous releases that make up the last four songs here. If you think, 'wow, that's quite a -bit of time to cover', especially since Vol. 1 covered three years (1995 to 1998) and Vol. 2 seven (1998 to 2005), you get a clearer view on how Casal's career shifted in its last decade and a half. 

While Casal was playing with Ryan Adams as part of The Cardinals, he stayed active as a solo performer, issuing No Wish To Reminiscence (2006) and just after the break up of the Cardinals in early2009 issuing Roots & Wings, which was written and recorded while still part of and touring with the group. But in the last decade of his life and music career he preferred dissolving himself in different bands, being part of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, indie supergroup Hard Working Americans and psych rock outfit Circles Around The Sun, as well as playing with Beachwood Sparks and off-shoots GospelBeacH and Skiffle Players. Add to that a ton of studio work, adding guitars and sometimes harmony vocals to everyone from James Iha to Lucinda Williams to Mark Olson, and Casal clearly kept very busy. Except on his own music. 

I picked up 2010's Sweeten The Distance, his tenth and last solo album, from a bargain bin a year or so after release. I played it, and thought to myself 'really nice', as one would with a Casal album - lovely vocals, solid melodies, impeccable if classic arrangements - but I also thought to myself 'these songs all sound variations on others of his, this album sounds like he is a bit 'written out'. I didn't know how right I was, sadly. The songs on Sweeten The Distance would be the last original songs of Casal published during his lifetime. The fact that his musical friends and companions reworked "Everything Is Moving", written in 2012 or so, and a handful of other tunes from Casal's solo demos is a testament to how beloved Casal was among peers. But the fact that for the last nine years of his life, no more originl music was forthcoming is also telling. Was this a factor in Neal's decision to end his life? I don't want to speculate. But it's sad that such a gifted singer-songwriter had nothing to tell in those last years to a small but faithful audience, and was fine in hiring out his guitar-playing skills to a ton of groups and projects. 

Highlights of this collection include two rather unsual covers: a kick-ass version of Terrence Trent D'Arby's "Wishing Well" that he contributed to an 80s tribute sampler -  taken, like almost the entire first half off odds'n'sodds cllection All Directions - that album's lovely title track and the last song he published in his lifetime, "Property Of Jesus" from an obscure tribute album to Dylan's Christian period (jeeez, the ideas for tributes sometimes...). There is also a beautiful acoustic rendition of his own classic "Too Much To Ask", as well as an acoustic reading of Beachwood Sparks' "Old Manatee" (of which the person who posted it had no recording date or info, so I seqeunced it for flow rather than date). The instrumental "Grimes' Surf Story" he did with his future Circles Around The Sun colleague Adam MacDougall was running a rather unreasonable five and a half minute and featured long sections where you mainly hear the latter, so I edited that down considerably just to get an idea of the track, and to not interrupt the flow of this collection, which - like the first two volumes - is more or less chornological.  

So, this concludes for the time being my posts on Neal Casal, but you never know. There might be more coming from this fabulous artist in the future, if I can dig out more stuff. In the meantime, enjoy Casalties 3 (and maybe No One Above You) and bathe once more in that luxurious, lovely voice and guitar-picking of Neal Casal...

PS. here's the trailer for No One Above You