NEW ALBUMS

NEKO CASE

Neon Grey Midnight Green ANTI-

Indie-rock auteur steps into the production limelight.

By Sharon O’Connell

Neko Case: bittersweet yet celebratory

EBRU YILDIZ

8/10

“THERE’S too much life for just one lifetime”, sings Neko Case with characteristically emphatic soul on her eighth album’s “Winchester Mansion Of Sound”. Though the song is an elegy for her friend and early inspiration Dexter Romweber, of psychobilly band Flat Duo Jets, that line sums up its author’s own duende as well as her creative thirst. In a 35-year career, she’s released seven solo LPs, started her own label, Lady Pilot, made an album with kd lang and Laura Veirs and recorded with kindred spirits including Nick Cave, Giant Sand and Calexico. If her latest feels overdue – Hell-On was seven years ago – it’s worth noting that Case is also still very much a member of The New Pornographers, who released a new record in 2023, and that in January this year she published a widely acclaimed memoir, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You.

Now comes Neon Grey Midnight Green, another welcome dispatch from the frontline of her overflowing life. Case takes the production reins on 12 richly expressionistic and mercurial songs shaped by a mix of indie rock, country both alt. and classic, ragtime, folk, powerpop and Southern Gothic, which flit between darkness and melancholy, hopefulness and light. Most of the set was recorded live with a full band, at her home studio in Vermont. Alongside longtime collaborators Paul Rigby (guitarist and co-writer) and pedal-steel don Jon Rauhouse, players include experimental jazz bassist Anna Butterss and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, while Colorado’s PlainsSong Chamber Orchestra make a weighty contribution.

Though a much less dense record than Hell-On, Neon Grey Midnight Green doesn’t stint on lyrical arrangements or sonic intrigue. Case may describe herself as “an untrained intuitive musician”, but her reach is deep and wide. Songs are intimate and exhilaratingly 3D, with sounds springing up in unusual places, unexpectedly dimmed or boosted, or changing their nature, none of which breaks the spell. The punctum of the brief “Tomboy Gold” is its jazz-inclined, Laurie Anderson-ish intro, while “An Ice Age” pitches like a boat in open sea, Case’s lustrous voice dropping in and out of reverb to great yearning effect. Terrific closer “Match-Lit” begins with an exaggerated symphonic plunge and a minute of metronomic ticking, matched by a choral passage in the fadeout.