All for One, One for All

Like a shimmer of gossamer and filigree, the blending of three distinct singers into a seamless musical identity on case/lang/veirs (out June 17 on Anti-) meets a challenge that goes well beyond who fits where in the harmony. Credit the collaborative process, in which all three found a focus that extends from songwriting through arranging, and save some for producer Tucker Martine, who helps the lush-but-spare instrumental mélange sound every bit as beguiling as the harmonies and material. There doesn’t seem to be a band, as such, but more of an atmosphere that folk guitar shares with chamber strings, tubular bells, and circus calliope. The results sound like something truly new, while underscoring the artists’ individual strengths.

No one sings ballads like the languid k.d. lang, whose “Blue Fires” spotlight turn seems to stop time in its tracks. No one renews the twang with assertive identity like Neko Case, as she does here on “Delirium.” And no one else brings the distinctly idiosyncratic sensibility of Laura Veirs (whose 2013 Warp and Weft, produced by her spouse Martine, first featured the backing of lang and Case), who perhaps serves as the catalyst for the cohesion, and extends the communal spirit with her elegiac tribute to Judee Sill (“Song for Judee”). 

Yet the project’s finest moments, from the opening “Atomic Number” through the cascades of call-and-response in “Greens of June” and the harmonies that resound through “I Want to Be Here,” make it difficult to divide the musical magic into individual contributions. This is a one-of-a-kind collaboration of three singular artists.