Sometimes a bluff opens doors you can only hope are real. Just ask Casey Gomez Walker, the lead singer and guitarist of Chicago-based alt-country band Case Oats.
She wrote the first Case Oats song – called ‘Bluff’, funnily enough – back in 2018, tracked it with her partner and drummer Spencer Tweedy, son of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, and uploaded it to Bandcamp. Soon after, an out-of-state friend messaged her to ask if she was up for playing a show in Chicago a few months later. She said yes, claiming she had a band. By the time the gig rolled around she actually did, and they played a full set to boot – a bunch of songs she’d written based on her journals, poems, and manuscripts from college.
That bluff didn’t just land her first show, it set her on the road to Case Oats’ debut LP, Last Missouri Exit, released a month after Gomez Walker and Tweedy announced their engagement. Their lives may never be the same again and it’s fitting that the record is a coming-of-age album of sorts that centres on growth and perspective. It’s “a reflection on experiences and stories that formed part of my early adulthood”, Gomez Walker says. Attempting to strike a balance between the “flawed people” she attached herself to and her burning desire to be her own person, she has crafted songs that offer a wistful, idyllic take on the Midwest without slipping into nostalgia – shaped, no doubt, by a refusal to take herself too seriously, a mindset that happens to be her top tip for any artist trying to break into the music industry.
That outlook translates directly into the record itself. Listening to it, you get the feeling that Gomez Walker is only looking back at what’s gone to help her maintain a present-focused outlook. Last Missouri Exit is a set of character studies filled with wry observations that address both the profane and the profound, unfolding like stories you tell a friend over a drink or while giving them a ride. For the most part, it’s the lyrics that carry the songs and make them truly memorable; the music itself rarely ventures beyond the boundaries of straightforward alternative country/pop rock.
While the majority of the tracks lean heavily into country, with Scott Daniels’ fiddle and Max Subar’s pedal steel featuring prominently, the best of the lot, such as lead single ‘Seventeen’, meld the genres Case Oats draw from. Then again, irrespective of your genre preferences, if you expect a three-minute song written about being 17, driven by acoustic guitar and fiddle, to be sweet or cute, you’re in for a surprise. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t kill yourself?” Gomez Walker deadpans with a detachment that makes the line land even harder. This nonchalance is also present in opener ‘Buick Door’ and ‘Tennessee’, the closest the record comes to pure country – musically, that is. The lyrics steer clear of the tropes commonly associated with the genre – hard work, family values, patriotism – and Last Missouri Exit is all the better for it. In fact, Gomez Walker doesn’t mind a bit of morbid fun either: despite being a mid-tempo country tune with a jaunty singalong chorus, ‘Bitter Root Lake’ is inspired by the true story of a couple who crashed into Little Bitterroot Lake in Montana in the early ‘80s.
“We brought just enough stuff to the basement to be able to record”, Tweedy, who produced the album, says about the recording sessions, and this attitude of not trying to be fussy or self-indulgent has paid dividends. The band never sound over-refined or go overboard, but being “shit hot musicians”, as Gomez Walker has described her bandmates, they work in plenty of flourishes to loosen alt-country’s otherwise rigid structures. Nolan Chin’s banging away on the piano during the bridge adds another layer to ‘Wishing Stone’ and the fiddle solo on the edgy ‘Hallelujah’ gives the song the kick the expletive-laced lyrics demand.
As for the album title, on the freeway to Chicago from Gomez Walker’s hometown there’s a sign before the Illinois border that reads, in part, “Last Missouri Exit”. One day, that marker became a point of no return for her, signalling the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. The record captures her suspended somewhere between these two states, ready to hit the road stretching ahead – no longer bluffing.
Last Missouri Exit is out 22 August via Merge Records
Case Oats: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram
Review by Attila Peter
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