Beautiful Pain is a music blog maintained by five women who all share a passion for music created and performed by other women. Their blog fuses mp3s, thorough artist profiles, album reviews and feature articles to comprise a really fantastic collection of information.

Recently, Sleepy wrote an artist feature for Neko Case, the Canadian singer/songwriter who recently released a new album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

I first heard about Neko Case in the October 2004 issue of ChartAttack Magazine when there was a small mention of the CD release, Hard-Headed Woman: A Celebration Of Wanda Jackson, in which Neko performed Wanda Jackson's Brown Eyed Handsome Man. I haven't heard the song, unfortunately, so I can't tell you if it is good or not. But another page of the Oct '04 issue was an advertisement for Neko Case's album, The Tiger's Have Spoken. I wondered to myself if this was her debut album, and with a little research, I found that she had three previous recordings PLUS she is a member of the 'indie rock' group, The New Pornographers.

Sleepy goes on to give the reader a sense of Case's musical past and creative evolution through her solo albums. She focuses on the new album, elegantly describing its impact on her:

The lyrical wonder that echoed through my room, quenched my thirst for good country. I haven't liked country prior to listening to Case, but her version of alt country is to my tastes. I had been deprived of such excellence as I had soaked in the short album of The Tigers Have Spoken. Sorry for going off track, but I have been satisfied like a musical prostitute who can't get enough.

Read her entire feature here, and bookmark Beautiful Pain to stay up to date on women in music. They're profiling a wide variety of artists and genres, and doing a really fine job of it.