SOUNDTRACK: NEKO CASE-Middle Cyclone (2009).
I first learned of Neko Case through The New Pornographers. Their song “Letter from an Occupant” blew me away. But when I’d investigated her solo work, I learned she was more of a country singer than anything else. Reviewers said that Middle Cyclone broke from that mold a little into more rock territory.
I don’t know her early stuff, but I can attest that these songs are mildly rocking. However, it’s hard to take the country out of the singer. There’s something about Neko’s voice on this disc that screams country (even as her songs get faster and more furious). But, much like k.d. lang who won me over when she broke away from her country roots, so did Neko Case.
Rather than explicit country, Neko case seems to be filling in the shoes of the sorely missed Kirsty MacColl, another great singer-songwriter who melded genres like so much fondue.
Case never hits the manic intensity of “Letter from an Occupant” (she admitted on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me that her vocals were sped up for that song), but she proves to be a powerhouse singer. And once I got over the fact that this album didn’t ROCK, I accepted that it was very good. I don’t know if I have a favorite track, although I do like her cover of Sparks’ “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth.”
I finally managed to listen to the last track, “Marais la Nuit” all the way through on my lunch the other day. It is, literally, 30 minutes of frogs and bugs chirping away. It’s quite relaxing, but not really worth listening to all 30 minutes.
[READ: October 8, 2009] “Summer of the Flesh Eater”
The title is not misleading exactly, but it may make you think zombies are afoot. But they are not. (I debated about revealing this, but figured it would win more fans of people who don’t like zombies than lose people who do).
This story is fantastic. It is written from the point of view of a group of suburban househusbands. They live on a cul de sac, eat fancy food and discuss the acquisition of art in knowledgeable terms. Their lives are upended when one of them moves out and the vacant house is bought by a man with hockey hair (and they can’t tell of it’s ironic or not).
When the men introduce themselves, the first thing he introduces to them is his Q. For it turns out that his barbecue is his most favorite item.
At first the cul de sac inhabitants mock this class-free individual and all of his bad habits: the truck on blocks in his front yard, his evil dog, etc. But soon, like the poisoning of an ecosystem, the kids and even the wives seem to be intrigued by this outsider.
The snooty tone is very funny and well maintained through the story. It is also more or less told in first person plural (like The Virgin Suicides) which leads to a lack of culpability as the story gets more and more creepy. And creepy it does get. As the men get more and more desperate, their thoughts turn more sinister. So that even they wind up aping their reviled neighbor.
It’s a rare story that can have you laughing for the first three pages and then cringing for the last two. Fantastic!
Read it here.
I Just Read About That... 
I too came to Neko Case through the New Pornos, but have since become a pretty dedicated fan. I think Case is phenomenal, but is often underestimated as a lyricist. She combines a wit that approaches that of Aimee Mann, with a sensibility that is less prone to irony (without ever lapsing into sheer schlock).
In addition to songs like “Middle Cyclone” and “This Tornado Loves You” from the most recent album, her skill as a song-writer is particularly evident in the opening songs on her previous album (‘Fox Confessor Brings the Flood’), “Margaret vs. Pauline” and “Star Witness.” Consider the imagistic compression of “Star Witness”: “My true love drowned in a dirty pan of oil / That did run from the block / Of a Falcon Sedan 1969 / (The Paper said ’75)” or “Trees break the sidewalk / And the sidewalk skins my knee. / There’s glass in the thermos / And blood on my jeans.”
(Love the blog–just peeping out of lurk-mode to share my almost irrational for Neko Case).
Thanks Chris! And thanks for unlurking. I feel rather remiss in not pointing out Neko’s lyrics on the album. I usually like to mention clever lyrics, and Neko’s surely got them. Some particular favorites: from “Vengeance is Sleeping” “If by now you are not dead and buried, you are most certifiably married” and from Magpie in th eMorning” the whole verse of “The vUlture wheels and dives / something on the thermals yanked his chain / he smelled your boring apex / rotting on the train tracks / he laughed under his breath / because you thought that you could outrun sorrow.” And of course, the way she belts out the last two words is magical.
I had originally been thinking of checking out Neko’s “Fox Confessor” but I kept putting if off until eventually Middle Cyclone came out. But now that I’m going on and on about this disc I’ll have to do some back cataloging myself.