A live album and Case's most recent record (excluding Fox Confessor, which hasn't hit the stores yet). On the short side at just over half an hour in length, but good value nonetheless in that most of the songs on it can't be found elsewhere in her recorded output. It comprises 10 songs taken from two shows that she (with live backing band the Sadies) played in early 2004, plus a version of "Wayfaring Stranger" separately recorded 'semi-live', and, unsurprisingly, it's all excellent. Case is in fine voice, and the sound quality is top-notch - crystal clear and, to be frank, better than that on her early studio recordings...we knew this already, but it's nice to have it confirmed that the girl can really sing - her vocals sound just as good on The Tigers Have Spoken as they do on Blacklisted and Fox Confessor.
Opener "If You Knew", a Case original, is an early highlight, swaggering in and swinging forwards in much the same way that "Hold On, Hold On" does; also particularly excellent are her rollicking take on "The Train From Kansas City" (as in Berry/Greenwich --> Shangri-Las), a cover of a song called "Soulful Shade Of Blue" (written by Buffy Sainte-Marie; name rings a bell but I don't know why), and a resonating, haunted rendition of her own "Blacklisted", which made me think that Blacklisted is one of the few albums that I'd be interested to hear done live in its entirety. And, of course, it's neat to hear Case sing "Wayfaring Stranger" - one of those 'can't go wrong' propositions (although, thinking about other versions I know well, I reckon it's probably shaded by Emmylou's take on the traditional number...I'm also fond of 16 Horsepower's cut, but that's a slightly different kind of beast) - stretching out vocally across the familiar melody and employing a backing choir to ramp up the dynamics and really punch out the words "I'm going there to see my mother,/She says she'll meet me when I come,/I'm just a-going over Jordan,/I'm just a-going over home".
