Neko Case embraced grief and disorder for Neon Grey Midnight Green

One might expect a record about personal loss to feature delicate guitars and hushed vocals, but Case wanted something else—a collection of human beings performing songs about being human. She says it’s also a statement about the state of artistry within the music industry.

“I wanted to pay tribute to having real people play and the people who play, because, you know, the world wants us to go away,” she says. “And the world doesn’t see the value of us and the value of things made by hand, or the value of humans who are here, or at least they don’t right now. But, you know, I do, and I wanted to remind people of what it sounds like to have people in a room playing all together.” Though she calls the concept of streaming “genius,” she adds that its financial model has left artists scrambling to make ends meet. “I wish somebody would have let musicians in on something they were inventing about them. Concept creators in general, it’s really awful. And it’s, it’s robbery… For me personally, I would not be on Spotify at all if it were just up to me.”

Case hastens to add that her excellent relationship with her label, Anti-, is the reason that she has kept her music on streaming services. “[Anti-] said, please don’t do it yet. And I said, Okay, only for you, but I’m not going to be quiet about the fact that I hate it. And they’re like, No, you shouldn’t, of course not.”

Spotify pays artists an average of $0.004 per stream, leaving even established artists like Neko Case wondering how they can fund a tour. And in the absence of fair royalties, the tours themselves become their main source of revenue. During the height of the pandemic, Case, like many others, was unable to tour—and was left without an income. So when Grand Central Publishing contacted her about writing a book, she was game. At first, she thought they meant she’d write a novel. Then they clarified: We want you to tell your story. “And I was like, no problem. I will do that. Writing about myself is not my first idea of a good time, but I did have a good time writing it because I, you know, I worked with a great editor who was great with prompts and helping me, you know, see, outside of my own ruts, because, you know, talking about yourself can be really boring. So it’s good to have other voices helping you out.”

The book, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, came out last winter to great acclaim. As in her music, Case writes her extraordinary story with poetic concision, like the time when, as a child living in the decidedly horseless city of Bellingham, Washington, she decided to conjure a horse. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, two horses came around the corner. While she does express the appropriate amount of shock (“HOLY SHIT! I had actually DONE IT”), the incredible moment passes as just one of many. The Harder I Fight recounts, among other parts of her life, how her father told her that her mother died of cancer—only to be reunited with her a year and a half later. (She had left to receive treatment in Hawaii, and Case’s parents decided it was better to lead their daughter to believe her mother was simply gone, instead of telling her about a treatment for an illness that she didn’t know her mother had.) 

After a tumultuous early adolescence with her mother and stepfather, she emancipated from them when she was 16. Throughout her chaotic and often frightening childhood and teenage years, music was a constant companion. “Thank god for my cassette tapes,” she writes in The Harder I Fight. “I could at least disappear into music from time to time… The Cocteau Twins and the Cramps and obscure things taped off the radio late at night. They comforted me. They still do.” In our conversation, Case speaks about the other ways that music can heal, like observing the humanity at work through performance. As a child, she says, “I was really obsessed with, like, old footage of people like Tina Turner, and how physical she was when she sang, and how she used it to get breaths out or to hit certain notes. It was very percussive, and the way she used her body to make very strong sounds was really interesting to me, especially women who don’t sing worrying about having a pretty voice, and that’s something most women do. They think the automatic setting is to sing pretty. And I always want to see and hear something more physical or not see, but also observe. I just love the whole animal. You know, when you watch videos of animals—the slow motion of a lion running towards its prey is one of the most beautiful things you can ever see, and that’s what I want to feel when I’m hearing the music too.”

Those who listen for the same qualities in Case’s music won’t be disappointed in Neon Grey Midnight Green, which ranks among her best. Though she’s always been interested in sonic palettes—the whirring sound running through 2006’s “Star Witness,” for example—this album is like the musical equivalent of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie: colorful, detailed, unpredictable, and full. The fact that its fullness comes from musical collaboration makes it an even more rewarding listen.

Case has always loved musical collaboration, her 25-years-and-counting stint with the New Pornographers being the most prominent example. She connects this, too, to her childhood. “I spent so much time alone. And music always seemed like something people were doing together. I always wanted to be in a band. I didn’t want to be a solo performer or a singer-songwriter who was by themselves with a guitar…I like the hovering of the plates that a group of people can make together, like the levitation that you get when you have a group of people. To be in a gang, to be in a thing that everybody’s working for together, and to have each other’s back, it’s just something I longed for since I was a little kid.”