The fearless Neko Case has returned from a seven-year hiatus with perhaps her most fully realized album to date. Neon Grey Midnight Green is a title only Case could conceive, let alone the lyrics to these songs, possibly more intimate and personal than ever. She creates a universe unlike any other, and that universe remains, 25 years on, with her uniquely powerful voice, unmatched storytelling, and creative, yet zany wordplay. Often, only she knows her references, whether they be an animal, an object, a person, or some element of the cosmos. That remains true, harking back to my personal memories of her halcyon Bloodshot Record days two decades ago.
The album pays tribute to the musicians, producers, and activists who have passed away recently, many of them her friends. Case produced the record and, more than any of her past albums, recorded live with a full band, mostly in her Vermont studio. Additional sessions were held in Denver with the PlainsSong Chamber Orchestra, and in Portland with Tucker Martine. Notwithstanding. Case is loyal to past collaborators. Appearing are John Convertino (Calexico), Jon Rauhouse, Nora O’Connor, and mainstay co-writer Paul Rigby. The core band is Rigby (guitars), Sebastian Steinberg (bass), Steve Moore and Adam Schatz (keys), and Kyle Crane (drums). Notables such as Anna Butterss and Steve Berlin grace the lengthy list of credits.
Her character sketch in the opener, backed by the chamber orchestra, “Destination,” runs for a full seven verses with lines like these – “Your tongue is a chewed straw/You’re all period blood and soundcheck blues/Both armpits ripped and a lucky horseshow pinball bruise.” For whatever reason, she seems fixated on ‘pinball bruise,” which appears in the stripped-down “Tomboy Gold,” a bizarre mix of spoken word and vocals, rendered only by Case, Schatz, who also doubles on sax, and the inimitable Berlin on bari sax. “Wreck” is the first release single, an exhilarating song featuring her trademark layered vocals and backgrounds from Rachel Flotard and O’Connor. It weirdly celebrates falling in love with another fallible human being.
The most poignant track may well be the piano-driven elegy “Winchester Mansion of Sound,” a tribute to her friend and collaborator Decter Romweber of the Flat Duo Jets. She presciently penned the song two years before his passing, feeling that death was near. Curiously, she adds the nursery rhyme lyrics, “down, baby down” toward the end, mingling with lines such as “Mad strides deliver/A tender psychic rive/We slip out of tune together/An emergency–your eyes/In the grip of recognition.” Musically, she draws from Robbie Basho’s “Orphan’s Lament,” which she considers the saddest song ever written.
Usually, Case is abstract as in her ode to a female friend in “Ice Age,” which ends with “You’ve been screaming at an ice age/In the ladies’ room.” Maybe she was just warming up because she rears her raging, punk persona on the title track with her renowned animal references, citing a lion,” wound tight, haunches loaded.” By the end of the tune, she is outright screaming. By contrast, “Oh, Neglect” floats on the orchestra’s strings as we hear such lines as “And I’m just your technicolor creature/Trapped in this lenticular scene.”
“Louise” is reflective and relaxed, luxuriating in pleasure, while “Little Gears” borders on conventional, at least musically, as a country waltz. The atmospheric standout “Rusty Mountain,” driven by Rigby and Schatz, may be as close as Case gets to a real love song, here rendered as one from musicians to other musicians. Another standout is the closer, “Match-Lit,” another mysterious, dreamy tune held down by a full nine musicians and the orchestra. Subtle references to Mickey & Silvia, the Everly Brothers, and others are all in tribute to their late friend, Dallas Good, of The Sadies.
Like any other Case album, we marvel at and can’t possibly grasp her imaginative wordplay. Nonetheless, the inexplicable attraction to her music remains, sounding better than ever.
