Neko Case

"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.

Thx for the tip!

> lol Cults
> anono-studio-band vibe

Just getting started with this record but the shifting production styles in bothersome, and makes a song like Bad Luck a total drag. The wordiness keeps drawing me deeper though, and I'm blown away by much of the writing. She mentions extinction a few times, yet finds a away to grapple with big themes though small specific images. It's really effective and making this more intriguing for me than the last two. The record seems political in a non-literal way.

yeah, I don't hear the "wordiness" but I suspect it's the kind of thing I'd like anyway

I feel like I did Alfred a disservice, he wrote a perceptive and subtle post which I abbreviated as “wordiness,” which is a terrible word.

Listened to this a bunch yesterday and it’s still not opening up for me, I miss her oblique lyrical approach, the unexpected imagery. I’ll keep listening for her voice if nothing else which is still incredible but I don’t see this one becoming a favorite.

There are lots of unexpected conceits in this album, I think.

Not sure why I held off on giving this a focused listen. It am doing so now - I think it’s great. I wasn’t crazy about “Bad Luck” or “Curse of the I-5 Corridor” in advance of the album, but they are both beginning to win me over. The duet toward the end is the only track that’s not connecting for me. Perhaps that will change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRSMEcxelkA

She and Conan looked like brother & sister standing next to each other, lol

I think “Bad Luck” (at least in that performance) seemed to go on a bit too long, given its “pop” simplicity and the degree of repetition in its songwriting – though the bridge really stood out for me.

Just finished first play of Hell-On. Of the tracks that weren't trailed in advance, "Dirty Diamond", "Winnie" and "Pitch or Honey" were the stand-outs for me. I'll probably go back to the LP at year-end but not before.

I met her today! At record store signing thing, but still.

Cool! (She retweeted me once, which I thought was awesome enuff... LOL)

Pitch or Honey might be my fav.