{"id":167137,"date":"2025-09-24T23:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T23:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/167137\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T23:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T23:23:08","slug":"neko-case-on-grief-and-neon-grey-midnight-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/167137\/","title":{"rendered":"Neko Case on grief and Neon Grey Midnight Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presidents change, trends come and go, and the earth grows warmer, but there\u2019s one constant we can always count on: the periodic reemergence of Neko Case\u2019s voice. Though it would be reasonable for That Voice to have lowered and graveled after more than 30 years, it\u2019s the same soothing howl in the wilderness it was in 1996, when her debut album caught the attention of indie rock and country fans alike. Case\u2019s new album, Neon Grey Midnight Green, is mainly about loss\u2014its songs are largely inspired by producers, activists, and musicians that have passed since her last album, 2018\u2019s Hell-On<\/a>\u2014but it\u2019s also about connection, perseverance, and light. And this being a Neko Case<\/a> album, it\u2019s also about what the natural world provides for us: solace, mystery, and comforting disorder.<\/p>\n

In \u201cLittle Gears,\u201d Case\u2019s narrator is let down by the lack of wonder in watching a spider build its web. \u201cShe finished it in less than an hour,\u201d she sings, adding in disappointment, \u201cI felt cheated by how easy it was.\u201dIt\u2019s one of several moments on Neon Grey when dismay follows beauty. Accordingly, though gorgeous as always, Case\u2019s voice on the album has a matter-of-fact tone that is equal parts acknowledgment and resignation about the human condition. To emphasize that humanity, Case recorded these songs with a variety of musicians, including the PlainsSong Chamber Orchestra, and kept every breath and rustling sleeve in the mix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[With] a lot of production these days, people take out a lot of human breaths,\u201d Case tells The A.V. Club over Zoom. \u201cIt makes you feel like you\u2019re suffocating listening to it. And I wanted there to be the sound of, you know, the coiling of the muscles, and not just the release of the muscles. Because it\u2019s all part of the sound.\u201d She then does a quick imitation of Patsy Cline singing \u201cSweet Dreams Of You,\u201d exaggerating one of Cline\u2019s mannerisms before a pivotal line. \u201cThere\u2019s the part when she goes, \u2018I should hate you the whole night through,\u2019 but she goes\u201d\u2014here Case inhales deeply\u2014\u201dand that\u2019s the part that makes you cry, not what she says next.\u201d<\/p>\n

One might expect a record about personal loss to feature delicate guitars and hushed vocals, but Case wanted something else\u2014a collection of human beings performing songs about being human. She says it\u2019s also a statement about the state of artistry within the music industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to pay tribute to having real people play and the people who play, because, you know, the world wants us to go away,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd the world doesn\u2019t see the value of us and the value of things made by hand, or the value of humans who are here, or at least they don\u2019t right now. But, you know, I do, and I wanted to remind people of what it sounds like to have people in a room playing all together.\u201d Though she calls the concept of streaming \u201cgenius,\u201d she adds that its financial model has left artists scrambling to make ends meet. \u201cI wish somebody would have let musicians in on something they were inventing about them. Concept creators in general, it\u2019s really awful. And it\u2019s, it\u2019s robbery\u2026 For me personally, I would not be on Spotify at all if it were just up to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Case hastens to add that her excellent relationship with her label, Anti-, is the reason that she has kept her music on streaming services. \u201c[Anti-] said, please don\u2019t do it yet. And I said, Okay, only for you, but I\u2019m not going to be quiet about the fact that I hate it. And they\u2019re like, No, you shouldn\u2019t, of course not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spotify pays artists an average of $0.004 per stream, leaving even established artists like Neko Case wondering how they can fund a tour. And in the absence of fair royalties, the tours themselves become their main source of revenue. During the height of the pandemic, Case, like many others, was unable to tour\u2014and was left without an income. So when Grand Central Publishing contacted her about writing a book, she was game. At first, she thought they meant she\u2019d write a novel. Then they clarified: We want you to tell your story. \u201cAnd I was like, no problem. I will do that. Writing about myself is not my first idea of a good time, but I did have a good time writing it because I, you know, I worked with a great editor who was great with prompts and helping me, you know, see, outside of my own ruts, because, you know, talking about yourself can be really boring. So it\u2019s good to have other voices helping you out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, came out last winter to great acclaim. As in her music, Case writes her extraordinary story with poetic concision, like the time when, as a child living in the decidedly horseless city of Bellingham, Washington, she decided to conjure a horse. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, two horses came around the corner. While she does express the appropriate amount of shock (\u201cHOLY SHIT! I had actually DONE IT\u201d), the incredible moment passes as just one of many. The Harder I Fight recounts, among other parts of her life, how her father told her that her mother died of cancer\u2014only to be reunited with her a year and a half later. (She had left to receive treatment in Hawaii, and Case\u2019s parents decided it was better to lead their daughter to believe her mother was simply gone, instead of telling her about a treatment for an illness that she didn\u2019t know her mother had.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a tumultuous early adolescence with her mother and stepfather, she emancipated from them when she was 16. Throughout her chaotic and often frightening childhood and teenage years, music was a constant companion. \u201cThank god for my cassette tapes,\u201d she writes in The Harder I Fight. \u201cI could at least disappear into music from time to time\u2026 The Cocteau Twins and the Cramps and obscure things taped off the radio late at night. They comforted me. They still do.\u201d In our conversation, Case speaks about the other ways that music can heal, like observing the humanity at work through performance. As a child, she says, \u201cI was really obsessed with, like, old footage of people like Tina Turner, and how physical she was when she sang, and how she used it to get breaths out or to hit certain notes. It was very percussive, and the way she used her body to make very strong sounds was really interesting to me, especially women who don\u2019t sing worrying about having a pretty voice, and that\u2019s something most women do. They think the automatic setting is to sing pretty. And I always want to see and hear something more physical or not see, but also observe. I just love the whole animal. You know, when you watch videos of animals\u2014the slow motion of a lion running towards its prey is one of the most beautiful things you can ever see, and that\u2019s what I want to feel when I\u2019m hearing the music too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who listen for the same qualities in Case\u2019s music won\u2019t be disappointed in Neon Grey Midnight Green, which ranks among her best. Though she\u2019s always been interested in sonic palettes\u2014the whirring sound running through 2006\u2019s \u201cStar Witness,\u201d for example\u2014this album is like the musical equivalent of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie: colorful, detailed, unpredictable, and full. The fact that its fullness comes from musical collaboration makes it an even more rewarding listen.<\/p>\n

Case has always loved musical collaboration, her 25-years-and-counting stint with the New Pornographers being the most prominent example. She connects this, too, to her childhood. \u201cI spent so much time alone. And music always seemed like something people were doing together. I always wanted to be in a band. I didn\u2019t want to be a solo performer or a singer-songwriter who was by themselves with a guitar\u2026I like the hovering of the plates that a group of people can make together, like the levitation that you get when you have a group of people. To be in a gang, to be in a thing that everybody\u2019s working for together, and to have each other\u2019s back, it\u2019s just something I longed for since I was a little kid.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Presidents change, trends come and go, and the earth grows warmer, but there\u2019s one constant we can always…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-167137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}