"I’m an animal," cries Neko Case on her fifth studio album, and there is something feral about her voice in full flight: It’s a wild, woolly sound, part Patsy Cline, part coyote baying at the high desert moon. Case is joined here by some New Pornographers bandmates as well as members of Los Lobos and Calexico. The result is hypnotic alt–country twang, with reverb–slathered guitars ringing out over music-box plinks and moaning cellos. Her stories of lovesickness are full of oblique poetry like "She is the centrifuge that throws the spires from the sun." But her high, hard voice invests her most elliptical lines with warmth, longing and other emotions that any human animal can feel.
Neko Case Middle Cyclone
NEKO CASE’S BOLD, ELEMENTAL NEW ALBUM ‘MIDDLE CYCLONE’ – HER FIRST IN THREE YEARS – SET FOR MARCH 3 RELEASE ON ANTI- RECORDSOn March 3, 2009, Anti- Records will release the eagerly awaited new Neko Case album Middle Cyclone. The fifteen-track collection is Case’s first release since 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, the best-reviewed and best-selling album of her career.
Middle Cyclone was produced by Case with Darryl Neudorf and recorded in Tucson, Brooklyn, Toronto, and Vermont. It features Case backed by her core band – guitarist Paul Rigby, bassist Tom V. Ray, backing vocalist Kelly Hogan, multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhouse, and drummer Barry Mirochnick – along with numerous guests including M. Ward, Garth Hudson, Sarah Harmer, and members of The New Pornographers, Los Lobos, Calexico, The Sadies, Visqueen, The Lilys, and Giant Sand, among others. In addition to twelve new songs written by Case, Middle Cyclone includes covers of ‘Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth’ by Sparks, and "Don’t Forget Me" by Harry Nilsson.
In 2006, SPIN Magazine called Case "one of pop music’s best" voices, and Interview Magazine hailed her album Fox Confessor Brings The Flood as "one of the most original, beguiling, honest records of the year." The album also earned Case Female Artist of the Year honors from the PLUG Independent Music Awards, and a Top 10 placement in the Village Voice’s annual Pazz and Jop Critics Poll of the year’s best releases. Fox Confessor was Case’s first album to debut in the Billboard Top 100, and has sold nearly 200,000 copies in the U.S. alone.
Track List:
01. This Tornado Loves You
02. The Next Time You Say Forever
03. People Got A Lotta Nerve
04. Polar Nettles
05. Vengeance Is Sleeping
06. Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth
07. Middle Cyclone
08. Fever
09. Magpie To The Morning
10. I’m An Animal
11. Prison Girls
12. Don’t Forget Me
13. The Pharaohs
14. Red Tide
15. Marais La Nuit