Neko Case is just one of those artists for me, woven deep into the personal narrative and mythology that I use to make sense of my own history, musical and otherwise.
It goes back about ten years, though it feels much longer, to 2002, when Blacklisted came out - which makes me 20 years old, third year university. I can't remember for sure, but I think I was put on to her by pitchfork (maybe this review, which does have the tang of familiarity), which I of course read daily at that stage, or either "Deep Red Bells" or "Tightly" (I can't remember which) on a Matador sampler, or maybe a combination of the two; however it came about, I fell quickly and deep for her nocturnal, moody take on americana, aided, no doubt by it being an almost entirely new sound and style for me at that stage.
So anyway, that was the crack, the shock of the new, and I cherished it and kept on listening to it plenty after the initial discovery. And somewhere in there too, probably not that long after, I remember coming across "Mass Romantic" (via audiogalaxy, I think, and played on winamp) and later picking up the great Electric Version, all part of that university period flurry of musical discovery, and incidentally a very different side of the glory of Neko Case.
Extemporanea helps to supply the next bit of the chronology; I can't remember what triggered it but I went and bought The Virginian in late '05 (that would've been the summer between the end of uni and the arrival of the real world, a hazily golden period in retrospect), and soon after that came Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (looks like I was still reading music blogs at that point!) - with which I was infatuated at the time and which, with the benefit of hindsight and distance, remains the high point of her oeuvre, as well as housing my single favourite song of hers, "Hold On, Hold On", which I initially liked plenty but didn't expect to endure in the way that it has; and that prompted me to get to the ace live record The Tigers Have Spoken (bought from Collectors Corner on Swanston Street, I'm pretty sure); of course, all round, she was an integral figure in the soundtrack to my 2006, a year at the tail end of which I also saw her live with the New Pornographers. And I was evidently still riding that wave into the beginning of the new year, 2007, so perfect timing for a show of her own that still counts as one of the most amazing music experiences I've ever had.
I think that was the real peak of it; I worked back to the others of her older records, Canadian Amp and Furnace Room Lullaby, over the next little while, at intervals, and then there was Middle Cyclone in early '09, that last a really quite remarkable album, though on a pretty slow burn for me (I sort of listened to it a bit when I first got it, appreciated it more than I really felt it in my stomach, and then realised at the end of the year while putting together the annual soundtrack, that it had really stayed with me). Also, through that '09/'10 onwards period, the New Pornographers really grabbed hold of me in a big way again - "Hey, Snow White", Twin Cinema, Challengers, Together, another live turn (plus a second, far less great Neko show in there).
Anyway, I'm not sure that that really conveys how ever-present - whether background or right at the forefront of my mind at any particular time - Case's music has seemed over all of those years, or how deeply it's penetrated for me at various points, but the point is, she's big for me. And so this year's The Worse Things Get... is an event, as well as an album that I have no hope of responding to with any approach to objectivity or separation from all of those existing layers.
... you never held it at the right angle ...
At least since Blacklisted, there's been something abstract and oblique about Case's songwriting style - her songs generally neither start nor go quite where you'd expect, with lots of little two and half or three minute slices - and that continues here; like Middle Cyclone, in some ways it feels much more about music than about songs as such, with the odd couple of exceptions like the convincingly surging "Man", which is basically this record's "People Gotta Lot of Nerve".
... all of you lie about something ... ( ... and change the way I love you ... )
Yet, despite that somewhat unexpected, peregrinatory dimension, everything seeming almost to drift, verses and choruses only sometimes apparent and, even when present generally taking forms that don't resolve in the usual ways, there's also something gripping about the record - the airiness entices, but there's an underlying sturdiness and vision that grounds it, not to mention dozens of mini-peaks, often little vocal moments, sweeping up to the surface when Case hits a particular sweet spot in her always luscious, characterful singing.
... she said get the fuck away from me ... ( ... no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ... )
With a voice like that, it's no wonder that it's often foregrounded, and indeed sometimes close to a capella, like on "I'm From Nowhere" and "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu" - sometimes used like a cry out in the night, and also capable of immense tenderness (take "Calling Cards"), rousingly emotive calls to arms ("Night Still Comes") and rollingly urgent, anthemically pop tones (closer "Ragtime").
... I wanted so badly not to be me ...
This one took a few weeks and several listens, and even now I can't say it's one of my favourites of hers. But what it is, is a Neko Case album, and a good one, and another staging point in the journey that I've been on with her - one that has a ways to go yet, I suspect.
It goes back about ten years, though it feels much longer, to 2002, when Blacklisted came out - which makes me 20 years old, third year university. I can't remember for sure, but I think I was put on to her by pitchfork (maybe this review, which does have the tang of familiarity), which I of course read daily at that stage, or either "Deep Red Bells" or "Tightly" (I can't remember which) on a Matador sampler, or maybe a combination of the two; however it came about, I fell quickly and deep for her nocturnal, moody take on americana, aided, no doubt by it being an almost entirely new sound and style for me at that stage.
So anyway, that was the crack, the shock of the new, and I cherished it and kept on listening to it plenty after the initial discovery. And somewhere in there too, probably not that long after, I remember coming across "Mass Romantic" (via audiogalaxy, I think, and played on winamp) and later picking up the great Electric Version, all part of that university period flurry of musical discovery, and incidentally a very different side of the glory of Neko Case.
Extemporanea helps to supply the next bit of the chronology; I can't remember what triggered it but I went and bought The Virginian in late '05 (that would've been the summer between the end of uni and the arrival of the real world, a hazily golden period in retrospect), and soon after that came Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (looks like I was still reading music blogs at that point!) - with which I was infatuated at the time and which, with the benefit of hindsight and distance, remains the high point of her oeuvre, as well as housing my single favourite song of hers, "Hold On, Hold On", which I initially liked plenty but didn't expect to endure in the way that it has; and that prompted me to get to the ace live record The Tigers Have Spoken (bought from Collectors Corner on Swanston Street, I'm pretty sure); of course, all round, she was an integral figure in the soundtrack to my 2006, a year at the tail end of which I also saw her live with the New Pornographers. And I was evidently still riding that wave into the beginning of the new year, 2007, so perfect timing for a show of her own that still counts as one of the most amazing music experiences I've ever had.
I think that was the real peak of it; I worked back to the others of her older records, Canadian Amp and Furnace Room Lullaby, over the next little while, at intervals, and then there was Middle Cyclone in early '09, that last a really quite remarkable album, though on a pretty slow burn for me (I sort of listened to it a bit when I first got it, appreciated it more than I really felt it in my stomach, and then realised at the end of the year while putting together the annual soundtrack, that it had really stayed with me). Also, through that '09/'10 onwards period, the New Pornographers really grabbed hold of me in a big way again - "Hey, Snow White", Twin Cinema, Challengers, Together, another live turn (plus a second, far less great Neko show in there).
Anyway, I'm not sure that that really conveys how ever-present - whether background or right at the forefront of my mind at any particular time - Case's music has seemed over all of those years, or how deeply it's penetrated for me at various points, but the point is, she's big for me. And so this year's The Worse Things Get... is an event, as well as an album that I have no hope of responding to with any approach to objectivity or separation from all of those existing layers.
... you never held it at the right angle ...
At least since Blacklisted, there's been something abstract and oblique about Case's songwriting style - her songs generally neither start nor go quite where you'd expect, with lots of little two and half or three minute slices - and that continues here; like Middle Cyclone, in some ways it feels much more about music than about songs as such, with the odd couple of exceptions like the convincingly surging "Man", which is basically this record's "People Gotta Lot of Nerve".
... all of you lie about something ... ( ... and change the way I love you ... )
Yet, despite that somewhat unexpected, peregrinatory dimension, everything seeming almost to drift, verses and choruses only sometimes apparent and, even when present generally taking forms that don't resolve in the usual ways, there's also something gripping about the record - the airiness entices, but there's an underlying sturdiness and vision that grounds it, not to mention dozens of mini-peaks, often little vocal moments, sweeping up to the surface when Case hits a particular sweet spot in her always luscious, characterful singing.
... she said get the fuck away from me ... ( ... no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ... )
With a voice like that, it's no wonder that it's often foregrounded, and indeed sometimes close to a capella, like on "I'm From Nowhere" and "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu" - sometimes used like a cry out in the night, and also capable of immense tenderness (take "Calling Cards"), rousingly emotive calls to arms ("Night Still Comes") and rollingly urgent, anthemically pop tones (closer "Ragtime").
... I wanted so badly not to be me ...
This one took a few weeks and several listens, and even now I can't say it's one of my favourites of hers. But what it is, is a Neko Case album, and a good one, and another staging point in the journey that I've been on with her - one that has a ways to go yet, I suspect.
