Album review by Cecilia Pattison-Levi
New music from indie-icon Neko Case is always worth the wait. It has been 7 years since Neko Case’s last solo album Hell-On that reflected on the loss of her home during devastating wildfires and Australians can really relate to that problem. Her idiosyncratic eighth album Neon Grey Midnight Green is a slice of dark Americana gothic song writing about her country and life at middle age examined with lazar-like focus and attention to detail. And, like many women at the peak of their powers, she has been busy with her band, The New Pornographers, and has released two albums with them, is in the middle of creating a musical adaptation of the film Thelma & Louise, and has released her memoirs, The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You in 2025. So, not slacking, then?!
The central tenet of this album Neon Grey Midnight Green is that “only music lives forever”. It is qualified with the thought of “we all deserve something better than a love song”. Neko Case proves those two central ideas on this extraordinary personal and visceral album. She acknowledges that she “is not easy to love” but this album is all about embracing qualified love in all its aspects as the grief that comes from losing love illuminates the songs.
Neko Case is of an age where she states: “I want to live a real life” and “still be on time for tomorrow”. The album folds in an expansive thematic discussion in its lyrics about love, self-acceptance, grief and loss. The images are wrapped in light, colours and perspective that only age can bring. The stream of consciousness lyrics are linked to descriptions of light and colour that are laced throughout this album. There are: bar lights, stage lights, fireworks, daylight, lit matches, technicolour, icy white, grey and the contrasting yellow of the central fixed sun in our solar system: “Do I look like the sun to you? / I bet I do” she sings.
The sonic soundscape follows the song writing and it is a sprawling mix of “noir” country, folk, rock, and pop. It’s an album that defies classification. But that is the essence of Neko Case, she crafts a sonic world that feels both cryptic just listen to ‘Baby, I’m Not (A Werewolf) and familiar with ‘Wreck’. The 12 songs on this album are meant to be listened to closely. Neko Case draws listeners into her singular world with fantastical lyrics, sonic swirls, and emotional contradictions.
The album opens with two-part song coda ‘Destination’ and ‘Tomboy Gold’. It is a strange way to open an album with a song cycle. In ‘Destination’ her vocals float over a chamber orchestra as she delivers a long lyrical passage of seven verses. The song’s complex structure welcomes the listener with a “Hello Stranger” and then a cocktail of “maraschino cherries” at the “bar”. There is longing, and regret, about the lifestyle of the musical scene culture with its “soundcheck blues” that is fuelled by kids trying to get out of the “one horse town”. It comes down to the fact that relationships are the core part of life and realising that the stranger who becomes a love interest is the “real destination”. Then, Neko Case, laments that fact as women in relationships become “a housewife, a house maid or somebody’s lover” in the reaching of a destination in life. The code ends with ‘Tomboy Gold’ and it is an oddly fragmented song of spoken vocals with jazz-inflected saxophone flourishes, echoes, and distortions. The mix of spoken word and melody reinforces Neko Case’s refusal to follow expected song writing conventions as she reflects on her childhood with her “Daddy would let his little girl hold the timing gun” while chanting the “walk sign is on to cross”.
The song ‘Wreck’ is a pop love song with Neko Case’s trademark layered vocals. It celebrates the process of falling in love. It is the most accessible song on the album. The most touching song is the piano-driven elegy ‘Winchester Mansion of Sound’. The song is about lost friends who have died on life’s journey (her friend and collaborator Decter Romweber of the Flat Duo Jets). The grief is visceral with his loss described as: “kick me in the heart” as she reminiscences about nights “under the railway bridge of the seriously unhinged” as the friend is chided for “swanning off to Heaven or Arizona” or wherever the dead go. It is in this song that Neko Case talks about the importance of music and reminds us that “only music is forever” and as living beings we will all die and that sometimes “there is too much life for just one lifetime”.
One of the album highlights is the extraordinary song ‘An Ice Age’ that is a narrative about an old female friend that has lodged in Neko Case’s “ladies’ room in my mind…near a payphone”. It captures the record’s core themes of a past time set in abstract memory, and it is about having the perseverance to survive your own history and how you remember it. The song blends acapella vocals with layered instrumentation and its punk ethos ends in the quiet reflection of “You’ve been screaming at an ice age/In the ladies’ room”.
The title track ‘Neon Grey Midnight Green’ contrasts the quiet icy white rage with the actual full-coloured rage of the “tempest” driven in the electric guitars. The colours of the storm “bring the tempest of rage,” the “lightning into the ground” and it “tastes like your disbelief”. Neko Case states “I’m not your mystery lady”. Then, the following song, ‘Oh Neglect’ contrasts the two songs before with blunt honesty that “my hair was grey at 26” that didn’t “match my bloodlust”. Neko Case confesses to being a “Polyanna”. The song floats over the strings as the listener is taken again into a memory of her childhood where she is “technicolor creature/Trapped in this lenticular scene”. But she now finds perspective in “I find myself young again” as she considers the impact of parental neglect: “Oh Neglect we have come so far / you and me”.
The song ‘Louise’, is like ‘Wreck’ as it is an off-kilter love song set in the colour of grey. The shade of “silhouettes” is “the colour of your name Louise” as the love interest braids “your pretty fingers into mine”. It is followed by the atmospheric ‘Rusty Mountain’ and it is ironically another love song but its about love from one musician to other musicians. In contrast ‘Little Gears’ is a country waltz that features a bass clarinet and is a song about a spider building a web. It is an observation on nature’s way and the arrogance of the human ego as Neko Case questions why humans “feel so above it all’ and disregard “the miracle” of nature. The spider’s day is long and hard as she tries “not to explain everything away”.
The truly odd ‘Baby, I’m Not (A Werewolf)’ that talks about “a rock salt haze” is richly orchestral with electric guitar sound. It may take many more listens to unpack this tale. The album closes out with ‘Match-Lit’ with its dramatic string introduction and shimmery guitars. The song sees Neko Case draw out the experience of lighting a match, effectively bringing the listener along with her and into the moment. It has a dreamy melody held together by Neko Case and her whole band in tribute to their late friend, Dallas Good, of The Sadies. The end of the song lingers with a metronome ticking beat that seems to stretch out time. If you wait, there is a reward for those interested in committing to a whole album: there is a final refrain.
Neko Case has delivered an album Neon Grey Midnight Green that pairs joy with sorrow, light with shade, past with future while lamenting all these aspects of life’s complexities in the present. Yet, she appears happy with where she is at…This is an album that will require multiple listens from the start to the finish. It’s a real record that needs the listener to invest time in it to harvest the wisdom. It’s brave, bold and a wonderful expression of looking at life as a spectrum with all its shades including grey and green.
