Case/Lang/Veirs - Case/Lang/Veirs [10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]

It started with a three-word email from k.d. lang to Neko Case and Laura Veirs: "Let's make a record." What came back in 2016 was not a side project and not a compromise. Three singular songwriters, each with a fully formed voice and no obvious reason to share a microphone, spent years trading verses until the seams disappeared. Tucker Martine produced at Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, and the record arrived on Anti- as one of the loveliest and least likely collaborations of the decade.

"Atomic Number" opens with all three voices stacked into something none of them could have sung alone. "Honey and Smoke" belongs to lang's torch-song gravity, "Song for Judee" is Veirs at her most quietly devastating, and "Best Kept Secret" lets Ralph Carney's horns wander in from a different, drunker record. Glenn Kotche drums throughout, the Tosca String Quartet arranges the corners, and Bob Ludwig mastered.

Ten years on it plays less like a novelty summit and more like a band that only ever made one album, which is precisely what it is.

This anniversary deluxe expands the original fourteen songs to twenty-seven, adding the previously unreleased "Accidental Tattoo" plus twelve live recordings from the 2016 tour, including each singer taking on the others' catalog. Pressed on blue dream splash vinyl as a brick-and-mortar indie retail exclusive. The live material has never been issued in any form.