Neko Case Issue #39

Middle Cyclone

By Leah Urbom
Published: March 1st, 2009 | 2:55pm

Although refusing to abandon the heavy imagery of predecessor Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko Case’s latest, Middle Cyclone, twirls away from the dark corners of the inner psyche to someplace more personal — Nature vs. Neko: illustrating her struggle with learning to love humanity despite its wretchedness.

Not simply a journey to love mankind, Middle Cyclone is a journey to love love, revealed best on the title track, “The Next Time You Say Forever,”and “The Pharaohs,” where she wails, “You kept me wanting, wanting, wanting, like the wanting in the movies.” Recorded in Brooklyn, Tucson, and Case’s Vermont farmhouse, this rendered many of the words on the album quite elemental, as in the instinctual “People Got a Lotta Nerve,” which speaks of animals turning on their keepers, or introductory track “This Tornado Loves You,” a tale of a cyclone with a specific victim in mind. For Case a tracklist is lonely without covers, so Sparks’ “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth” and Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me” help to ease Middle Cyclone’s aching heart.

Always evolutionary, Case takes almost a more musical approach to these new songs. Whereas heavier production can mark downfall for some independent artists, she simply allows more fluidity in; a little jazziness. The sound may have been polished a bit, but the characteristic dark and ragged edges linger on tracks like “Polar Nettles,” “Vengeance Is Sleeping,” “Fever,” and “Prison Girls,” where her non-standard song structures and echoed vocals stand sure-footed and un-waning, proving that Case and her musty barn house recordings did right by her history.

If she “can’t give up acting tough” (because it’s all that she’s made of) as she tells us on “Middle Cyclone,” that’s OK — we love tough broads, and she’ll shake us deaf and dumb in the process, anyhow.