Neko Case
Middle Cyclone
Anti
By Mike Randall
While reading pre-release chatter about Neko Case’s new album during a visit to an online forum I frequent, a poster made a comment in jest that couldn’t have hit the nail any more squarely on the head. In an attempt to describe her incomparable voice, he declared that Case could sing an Econ 101 textbook and it would sound amazing. While that is unquestionably true, if there’s ever been a knock on Case it’s been precisely that - her voice has carried her at times when content has failed. With Middle Cyclone, her sixth record, her storytelling has caught up to her vocal chops, and that’s no small feat.
At times alt-country, occasionally straight country, often folk-pop, Case has long been steadily unclassifiable as an artist as anything beyond timeless. That holds true with Middle Cyclone, but she’s developed a Loretta Lynn fire here that really works for her no matter the style or lack of one. Like Lynn, Case is a book that can’t be judged by its soft angelic cover, and she’s never exhibited a more dangerous persona. She sings of her faith in love and nature, and her faithfulness to both. Let’s just say that the ground she walks on is faring much better than lovers that have crossed her. “The next time you say forever I’ll punch you in the face,” she sings during “The Next Time You Say Forever.” As if her point wasn’t communicated with such a direct statement, she follows it up with “You never know when I’ll show you the never.” Furthering her aggressive poignancy, the jangling Rickenbacker tone of “People Got A Lotta Nerve” naturally complements her heavenly voice, even when delivering lines like, “But I’m a man eater/Still you’re surprised when I eat ya.”
As someone that has publicly expressed being challenged in the love-song department, even Case seems somewhat surprised by the confrontational spirit of her relationships and how she’s chosen to express it. “I didn’t know what a brute I was,” she reveals on the excellent “Vengeance Is Sleeping,” pouring out her heart above tumbling finger picked acoustic guitars. Her wordplay is biting, if not downright cringe inducing for any self-respecting male, but you can tell she’s been burned and still you feel for her while simultaneously fearing her or hoping she looks your way. “I’m sure you’re sleeping sound with a mistress of the hours/The hours that grind your life to dust,” she continues during “Vengeance,” but it’s clearly someone she still misses. The folk-y title track, featuring little more than her voice supported by M. Ward’s acoustic guitar, displays more of her misfortunes in love through ragged imagery-laden lyrics, singing “Can’t scrape together quite enough to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love.”
Despite some of her coldest subject matter to date, Case’s crack band (Garth Hudson of The Band and members of Calexico, Los Lobos and The Sadies also contribute) helps create her warmest, most atmospheric record to date. While apparent during the blues-y cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me,” the eerie “Polar Nettles” or the starry “Magpie To The Morning,” it’s “Prison Girls” that melds the voice to the song like never before. Dark and swampy, it’s loaded with more hooks than any Case song in quite some time. “Prison girls are not impressed,” she declares more as a threat than any kind of affirmation, before launching into the record’s most vivid passage: “Awakened by a droning voice/I love your long shadows and your gunpowder eyes/ Is it a lady or is it a man/Humming helicopters through the blades of a fan.”
While Case might have been caught off-guard by how she translates her passion or the unfulfilling makeup of her liaisons, she’s very clear on their origin. “You can say it’s my instinct…My courage is roaring like the sound of the sun,” she reveals after the Church-like organ intro of “I’m An Animal.” She’s certainly nurtured by nature much more than any kind of masculine figure, and for the first time she’s managed to effortlessly communicate the connection between the two subjects she most frequently covers. The themes aren’t pretty but the voice that sings them certainly remains so, and now she’s also given us some excellent reading material.
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