Neko Case

xp middle cyclone is my favorite

She's doing a short tour w/Dan Bejar opening late this year.

That sounds amazing

Your blues rules

first time thru Gumball Blue I thought, well, she should've given this one to the New Pornos ... then learned it's a Newman co-write.

and with that said, it's pretty amazing how much Newman's style infiltrates that song, considering Neko's distinctive (writing) voice.

She's doing a short tour w/Dan Bejar opening late this year.

note that she has 63 dates currently booked in the six months before the leg with Destroyer

I love Middle Cyclone and I listen to it all the time. I pull out Furnace Room and Blacklisted pretty often too.

I really liked the last one but there were just a couple songs I had a hard time listening to (notably the "Nearly Midnight, Honolulu"), which keeps me from putting on the album regularly.

In any case I regard her as one of my very favorite artists. I haven't yet listened to the new one though the singles have been hit and miss for me.

"halls of sarah" is excellent

i think i like this one better than the last one, feels more balanced

somewhat ot but fox confessor increasingly seems like one of the best albums ever made to me

Yeah, probably her best, still feels mysterious and new every time I hear it. The Sadies did a fantastic job backing her up.

fox confessor is absolutely extraordinary

I'm still fan of Middle Cyclone too. This one's good, but her albums take a while, mostly.

"behind the reservoir of collarbones / forms two private lakes" she's also one of the best lyricists going rn

She is a crazy talented writer for sure. "Margaret Vs Pauline" sketches out a whole world in under three minutes.

god yeah, 'one left her sweater sitting on the train / the other lost three fingers at the cannery' is just such a perfectly telling juxtaposition

"star witness" is my favorite lyric of hers, it is just incredibly vivid from line to line. the second verse alone ("trees break the sidewalk and the sidewalk skins my knees / there's glass in my thermos and blood on my jeans / nickels and dimes of the fourth of july / roll off in a crooked line / to the chain-link lots where the red tails dive" breathtaking)

just remembering the way her voice dips when she sings 'dive' there gives me goosebumps, honestly

pro tip: fox confessor is also a great album to fall asleep to

we've never done a fox confessor or albums poll, just sayin'

Heard some of this in someone else's house last night! Sounded even better following that Kanye krap.

'red wine is fast/at the lip of your glass/and I'm going to ruin, everything...' A minute and a half of utter perfection.

this album is extremely good, I rank it highly in her discography. prefer it to the last couple (which i also really love admittedly.) the Crooked Fingers cover/duet is really astonishing.

It's taking longer to sink in than expected; every time I listen to her I have to accustom myself to long verse lines settling into or occasionally fighting the melody, not to mention her sudden key changes. "Gunball Blue" and "Winnie" and "Pitch or Honey" are the standouts. Had no idea she was singing "mercurochrome and merthiolate stains, oh" on "My Uncle's Navy."

she seems to sing about love a lot more on this album than in the past

every time I listen to her I have to accustom myself to long verse lines settling into or occasionally fighting the melody, not to mention her sudden key changes.

^This is very well put...

I am enjoying this more than her last few, on first listen... but she's prob. not the kind of artist to form impressions based on "first listen, at desk while working" (if that's fair to any artist!).

(I dug the Case/Lang/Veirs album, but it felt like Laura Veirs led the charge on that one.)

she definitely did, once it got going. whenever they needed songs, they went to her considerable well. (Veirs writes dozens and dozens of songs per album.)

Yeah, I dipped into her catalog after that album – it’s so extensive!

when ppl say “better than her last few” are you including middle cyclone? because that is her best album

yep

Personally, yes -- it never clicked w/me. But I'm open to the idea that I should revisit it!

it clicked w/me but i just prefer the new one. it's very hard to choose favorite, though. or to really place the albums in much of an order.

i think her most underrated one these days might be The Tigers Have Spoken, that's a killer.

Blacklisted->Tigers->Fox Confessor is one of those astonishing trios of albums, I just value them so highly. I try not to get "locked into" a certain era of an artist's work, and I have given her subsequent albums a fair shake... but for whatever reason, those three have remained the untouchable totem for me.

Lukewarm take blacklisted ->tigers->fox->cyclone is as good as Led Zeppelin 1-4

You can go Funrace room instead of tigers if you want to separate live/studio but

middle cyclone has her best lyrics imo, that’s what puts it over the top for me

haven’t spent much time with the new one but the wordiness Alfred points out is really bugging me, she’s less focused on concision it seems and that was one of her greatest strengths, three or four albums in a row of perfect miniatures. also Bad Luck sounds like lol Cults

idk what made Middle Cyclone attractive to me on first listen is that she got down to business in the first three songs: her immediate hooks, that huge voice, the perfect instrumental accompaniment.

i got issues with middle cyclone's pacing. otherwise fantastic

I'm halfway through a "Middle Cyclone" re-listen... I feel like a bum insisting on a negative assessment, but these songs do not hold a candle (IMO) to those on the preceding albums(!!) (To each their own, tho!!)

"The Pharaohs" is a really nice song, in a classic Neko mode (almost sounds like pastiche of earlier songs).

“i’m an animal” is easily my favorite song of hers

"This Tornado Loves You"!

Love the Nilsson cover too.

"The Pharaohs" is too spacey for me.

Ends w/half-hour of crickets! Forgot about that...

The Nilsson cover ("Don't Forget Me") is great, I agree

“Red Tide” is real nice, and I love the opening of “Fever.”

The last album is good but kind of hurts to listen to in places, there’s something so desolate about most of the songs. “Ragtime” is a great closer though.

Forgot Magpie to the Morning

"He laughed under his breath because you thought that you could outrun SOOOORRROOOOOWWWW"

I do wish more of her recent uptempo songs featured the Sadies.

Yeah, I like a lot of the songs on the new one but some of the instrumentals have that anono-studio-band vibe she managed to avoid for a long time

My only problem with Fox Confessor is that it makes me feel let down listening to her other records. They just don't have that same magic for me.

She's on Conan tonight.