From there she goes into her frequent mode of protest against a culture, particularly the rock-music culture she came up in, in which all a woman is supposed to hope for is to be a muse to some guy who\u2019ll write a song for her: \u201cTake your radio and shove it!\/ All your \u2018he\u2019s\u2019 and \u2018she\u2019s\u2019 and rhyming \u2018love\u2019 \u2026 We all deserve better than some love song.\u201d The arrangement is mostly acoustic, with ornamentation from other instruments entering only cautiously, as if scared of what might happen if they come on too strong.<\/p>\n
But then there is a twist. The song pivots to address someone else, someone other than the usual suspects: \u201cAnd now that someone really loves me \u2026 It took some divergent insight long in finding\/ But now you\u2019re here.\u201d There is even a surge of orchestral strings. And at the end of the song, when Case repeats, \u201cWe all deserve better than a love song,\u201d it becomes clear that the better thing is actually, simply or not-so-simply, love itself.<\/p>\n
Neon Grey Midnight Green\u00a0offers all of the qualities listeners have come to expect from a Neko Case album: Her nonpareil voice brings its vast scope of tones and timbres from husky lows to belting peaks, which can kick you in the groin as readily as they can swaddle your bleeding heart or transport you across oceans. Undulating melodies defy you to sing along as the hook of one verse snags upon the turning whirligig of another, and standard terms like bridge and chorus are outmoded by the way Case constructs musical soliloquies to probe the extreme specificity of her thoughts. The title track, right in the middle of the album, presents suites of changing moods like weather systems, or rounds of a fight, as tense drones give way to Heart- or Led Zeppelin\u2013style guitars over which Case shouts, \u201cI\u2019m not your backdoor man! \u2026 Not your \u2026 girl!\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there are the expected, fablelike songs about nature and its beasties\u2014including the body-dysmorphia shaded \u201cBaby, I\u2019m Not (A Werewolf),\u201d which culminates in the incredible declaration, \u201cI ate every story, I ate every myth\/ And when I finished with the minotaur\/ I ate the labyrinth,\u201d as well as the prototypically Neko Case, mostly waltz-timed \u201cLittle Gears,\u201d about watching a spider spin a web more perfect than any artwork, and wondering, \u201cWhy isn\u2019t that enough!?\/ Why do people need to feel so special all the time\/ So above it all?\u201d (As she once titled a song, \u201cPeople Got a Lotta Nerve<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n But on this album, some things also have changed. The record begins with the sustained note of an orchestra tuning up. The presence of this cinematic-scaled ensemble is the biggest formal development on\u00a0Neon Grey Midnight Green\u00a0compared with any of Case\u2019s previous albums\u2014the PlainsSong Chamber Orchestra, an extension of\u00a0an existing project<\/a>\u00a0based in Denver, has been assembled in this particular form just for this album by Case\u2019s friend, the violinist and arranger Tom Hagerman (also of the band\u00a0DeVotchKa).<\/p>\n The self-assurance evinced by this choice is matched by Case\u2019s decision to bill herself for the first time as the sole producer of the album, which was also the first recorded at her farm in Vermont in her own home studio, Carnassial Sound.\u00a0Carnassial:\u00a0adj. \u201cof teeth, adapted for shearing flesh<\/a>,\u201d as in carnivorous\u2014Case is nothing if not on-brand there. But the strings, woodwinds, and horns of the Chamber Orchestra introduce something less barbed than her most familiar, lonesome, film-noir sound. It\u2019s a warmth, a grandeur, a romanticism her music\u2019s always hinted at but never quite unleashed as much as it does here.<\/p>\n The first words she sings, on opening track \u201cDestination,\u201d are \u201cHello, stranger.\u201d It\u2019s a musical salutation that calls back to\u00a0a 1937 song<\/a>, now a bluegrass standard, by foundational country band the Carter Family, as well as to a\u00a01960s R&B classic<\/a>. But above all, it recalls a foundational song of Case\u2019s own, \u201cHold On Hold On<\/a>,\u201d written 20 years ago, which she\u2019s called her first autobiographical song. It begins, \u201cThe most tender place in my heart is for strangers\/ I know it\u2019s unkind, but my own blood is much too dangerous.\u201d Those words staked out some of the boundaries (so much more understandable post-memoir, as so many listeners now know the back story) that made Case back in the 2000s seem like such a fearsome but sad but ultracool lone wolf\u2014or\u00a0lone orca, or cheetah, lion, mosquito, mockingbird, or sphinx<\/a>, as the case may be.<\/p>\n On this album, though, that \u201chello, stranger\u201d is followed by the phrase, \u201cyou remind me of someone.\u201d And that\u2019s because these songs, not for the first time but much more straightforwardly and unabashedly, are full of people. Not people always masked as forest creatures or mermaids or pirates or phenomena of physics, though certainly the songs still contain many of Case\u2019s usual visionary metamorphoses, but at the forefront, individuals she cares or has cared about. In all kinds of senses\u2014the platonic and the artistic and the familial and yes, even the romantic\u2014most of what she offers here are love songs.<\/p>\n Perhaps this willingness to dare sentimentality comes partly from the confidence gained in the process of writing the memoir and making her stories public in a more open way than before, though most of the songs would have been composed in and around (or even before) that writing. It might partly be the feeling of being \u201cyoung again\u201d that Case sings about here, which she\u2019s explained in interviews as a liberated and renewed selfhood after having made it through the foggy \u201csecond adolescence\u201d of menopause. She\u2019s also identified herself as genderfluid for the first time, crediting a younger generation for giving her language for the unfixed identity she\u2019s always felt (though for her that extends beyond sex and gender even to species). Finally, though, there is also just the \u201cgift,\u201d as she\u2019s said, of having to deal with grief, for the many friends, collaborators, and sources of inspiration she has found herself losing now that she\u2019s in her 50s.<\/p>\n As a listener about the same age, I understand those life passages all too well. This week alone, while listening to\u00a0Neon Grey Midnight Green, circumstances have brought me up close to the punishments being endured by an older, wonderfully sharp colleague in the late stages of terminal cancer, and by a brilliant middle-aged artist friend going through a dangerous mental health crisis in part because the economic supports are not there for them the way they used to be.<\/p>\n One of the people Case memorializes on this album was another member of my own artistic community here in Toronto, the\u00a0guitarist Dallas Good from the band the Sadies<\/a>, who often accompanied Case in her early days and among many other things co-composed \u201cHold On Hold On\u201d with her. Good died without warning of heart failure in 2022, at only 48. In the closing song here, \u201cMatch-Lit,\u201d she sings about a dream she had after his death that she also described in her book, in which he appeared to her, said, \u201cWatch this!\u201d and disappeared inside a cactus. \u201cOh, this parlor trick,\u201d she sings. \u201cWe understand and are beloved of its magic.\u201d The magic she mostly means, we understand, is music. To underline the point, in the final seconds Case and Richard Reed Parry (of Arcade Fire and another close friend of Good\u2019s) sing in high, almost horror-movie voices, the words \u201clove, love is strange,\u201d from the mid-1950s\u00a0Mickey & Sylvia song<\/a>\u00a0she and Good were both fond of. (It also appears in the\u00a0Dirty Dancing\u00a0soundtrack, so it\u2019s a bit of a Gen X secret handshake.)<\/p>\n Along with Good, Case pays tribute to her friend and hero Dexter Romweber of the band Flat Duo Jets, on the song \u201cWinchester Mansion of Sound\u201d\u2014the title a reference to the huge and strange architectural marvel\u00a0the Winchester Mystery House<\/a>\u00a0in California. Many of the songs are also crafted to honor musicians in a time when the economics of streaming, touring, and other necessities of the trade are threatening their livelihood.<\/p>\n But other songs make homages to, or at least open dialogues with, even more personal figures. Readers of her book will quickly notice the specters of her father on \u201cTomboy Gold\u201d (an eccentric double saxophone\u2013backed track reminiscent of some of the experiments with voice and instrumentation on Fiona Apple\u2019s\u00a0Fetch the Bolt Cutters<\/a>) and more perilously of her mother on \u201cAn Ice Age.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Carl Wilson <\/a><\/p>\n Perhaps my very favorite song on the album is also its most straightforward and traditional love song, \u201cWreck<\/a>,\u201d presumably addressed to the longtime partner and farm cohabitant she jocularly refers to in\u00a0her popular Substack newsletter<\/a>\u00a0as \u201cManFriendJeff.\u201d The music there positively\u00a0romps,\u00a0compared with the waywardness of many of the songs, and the lyrics have a similar energy that reminds me of the poet Frank O\u2019Hara in his\u00a0most ecstatic-yet-wry romantic moments<\/a>:<\/p>\n Please come back soon\u00a0<\/p>\n Sooner than you want to<\/p>\n It\u2019s the only thing in this whole world<\/p>\n That will please me<\/p>\n I know it\u2019s selfish<\/p>\n But you\u2019re the sun now!<\/p>\n And it\u2019s a big job<\/p>\n One you didn\u2019t apply for \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The 25 Greatest Picture Books of the Century Everyone Was Waiting for the First South Park Episode Post\u2013Charlie Kirk. Well \u2026 A New Show Argues That a Man Behind One of the Butchest Brands in Beer Was Gay. But Did His Affairs Really Almost Ruin the Company? Romance\u2019s Hottest Pairing? An Impossible Couple From a Decades-Old Publishing Sensation. I Think I Know Why. Then there\u2019s the tantalizing taste of \u201cLouise.\u201d It\u2019s presumably from or at least adjacent to the\u00a0Thelma and Louise\u00a0stage musical adaptation Case has been working on with the film\u2019s original screenwriter Callie Khouri for a decade, recently workshopped in London\u2019s West End and hopefully someday Broadway-bound. Meanwhile we have this love song, presumably for Louise from Thelma, and isn\u2019t that like a dream come true?<\/p>\n Still it always comes back to music and musicians. The \u201cstranger\u201d in \u201cDestination,\u201d the road-tripping and club-going \u201cyou\u201d the song addresses\u2014with one of the album\u2019s most accessible melodies, a true welcoming-in\u2014 might be any number of musical peers, predecessors, and successors Case admires, especially the women. On the great tour bus of the soul, she sings, \u201cYou\u2019re the real destination,\u201d and that\u2019s where the strings come in, even a harp playing glissandos, in all their movie-palace lushness, as Case sings, \u201cYou somehow live free of men\u2019s eyes?\u201d And \u201cmost of all,\u201d she adds, \u201cI love you because you don\u2019t pretend it doesn\u2019t hurt\/ Waiting for the world to catch up\/ And see you for your worth.\u201d<\/p>\n We might not know who she\u2019s thinking of there. But for any listener who\u2019s been paying attention all these years, the description matches exactly what most of us have forever thought about Neko Case herself.<\/p>\n Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/5f392eb3-4561-436f-a254-f150e99f6407.jpeg\")
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\n Neko Case Wrote a Haunting Memoir. She Had to Survive the Unimaginable.
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