In the epic battle between Man and Nature, Neko Case’s allegiance is clear. On her 2004 live album, The Tigers Have Spoken, she sings on the title track about a captured tiger: “They shot the tiger on his chain / in the field behind the cages / he walked in circles ’til he was crazy / and he lived that way forever.” On 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, Case tries to save a bird from certain death in “Maybe Sparrow.” The empathy continues on the new Middle Cyclone, both for man-eaters on “People Got A Lot Of Nerve”—“You know they call them ‘killer’ whales / but you seemed surprised when it pinned you down to the bottom of the tank”—and nature in general on “This Tornado Loves You.” It all goes to show that Case is fascinated by what can’t be tamed, which her own rootless life has undoubtedly influenced. She moved around as a child, and has called a few places home over the past decade—Seattle, Chicago, Tucson. Even now that she’s purchased a 100-acre farm in Vermont—where she spent time as a child—Case remains unfettered: She’ll spend most of the next two years on the road. She recently spoke toThe A.V. Club about making her new album, and how dream dictionaries are bullshit.
Bonus: There's also a New Yorker article also discussing Neko Case's upcoming album online:
The title of Neko Case’s new album, “Middle Cyclone,” is a reference to “mesocyclone,” the core rotational structure of a thunderstorm, which can produce a tornado. This was not my interpretation of the phrase, which I took as a commentary on age, and on how Case turned thirty-eight last year: hair flying, throat open, poorly secured items be damned. Case’s work on “Middle Cyclone”—the best of her career by a generous margin, and every song her own except for two covers—addresses youth, aging, marriage, death, change, and all that knobby stuff you run over on the way to your midpoint.
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