“I’m almost done pounding, I’m sorry. They’re looking at me like they’re going to take one of my legs off any second – get offa that!”
It’s not often you get to conduct an interview with an artist about their most emotionally cathartic record to date while they’re in the middle of feeding their “overly-socialised, overly-handled” menagerie.
In between chastising her bullying cat for always cutting in on her dogs’ dinner (“c’mere, jerk! This is where I lock him in the bathroom”) and regaling one with the status of her chickens (“they’re getting fluffy because it’s getting to be winter”), Neko Case is – impressively – still amply discussing her latest, and most personal, album.
The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You may have a longwinded title, but then it has a lot of ground to cover.
Making up for the long absence since 2009’s Middle Cyclone, the album crosses a four-year gulf in which the 43-year-old songsmith took time to deal with the death of both her parents and several close friends.
But where The Worse Things Get… could have – like its creator – succumbed to a singular shade of tragedy and bereavement, it instead maintains a cutting level of complexity, charm, and even humour.
“Well, no situation is black or white and people want happiness to be one solid state that lasts all the time, forever, and it’s totally not that way,” remarks Case, reflecting on the grief that transpired.
“It sucks more than anything sucks but at the same time, if you can find some humour in it you definitely know things are moving along at least.”
“Even if you can’t see beyond the situation – which you can’t – you can at least accept ‘well, this is going to take a long time and it’s going to be really shitty but I’m just going to accept that it’s going to take a long time’, because if I don’t I’m just going to keep fighting it and nothing’s gonna happen except for I’m going to continue to be miserable.”
It’s hard to glean the sobering experience of grief that Case went through, but the way it forced her to look more inward is evidenced in her sixth solo album, where her typically powerful narration undergoes a striking change of perspective – towards herself.
“It sucks more than anything sucks but at the same time, if you can find some humour in it you definitely know things are moving along”“I knew I was writing everyday when I was feeling like crap. But I was writing as an exercise to be writing, to keep doing it. But I didn’t think that anything was necessarily going to end up on the record, because it was all very personal, which is not how I write,” she explains.
“I don’t find joy in writing about myself, I find joy in making stories and making narratives,” Case declares.
“So, I had to decide, ‘I should just take it as a challenge to try to turn these personal songs into something I find joy in writing about or just being honest about what’s been going on…”
“Not that anyone’s been dying to hear what I’ve been doing,” she adds in a mockingly comic tone. “It’s not like that, it’s just I wanted to try and push my boundaries a little bit.”
Consider them pushed. Her newest 38-minute collection is imbued with previously unheard qualities in the Neko Case songbook.
These new features extend into directions both more stark and more startling, with cutting doses of graceful aggression and erudite yet droll musing aplenty.
Elements that are all operating at full capacity on the many lines of wit and wisdom contained in lead single, ‘Man’, which also sets the LP’s more autobiographical tone.
The acapella ‘Nearly Midnight, Honolulu’ recounts a fight between a mother and daughter that Case overhead in the titular Hawaiian location, sparking direct address lyrics: “get the fuck away from me/why don’t you ever shut up?”
Elsewhere, ‘Where Did I Leave That Fire?’ deals with Case’s own difficulty in recovering the spark of life – or artistic inspiration – after a period of emotional submersion, made manifest in the tune by the pings of a submarine sonar while the pangs of struggle are subdued by droll lyrics; “I do believe we have your fire, lady/you can pick it up if you come down with ID.”
Though a necessity in her personal recovery, the shift in her writing methods was something Case was “very unsure about” at first – “I second-guessed everything a lot” – allowing the self-doubt to creep in.
“But then I thought… trust the audience that if they don’t like it they’ll say – they’ve been around a long time. They’re pretty sweet and accepting.”
One “super-dumb way to look at it,” she adds flittingly, “is like a really bad cliché, office worker team-building exercise where you fall backward…‘ok, catch me everyone, I’m falling backward off the desk’.”
“I don’t find joy in writing about myself, I find joy in making stories and making narratives”Fans are getting their chance at some more ‘trust building’ while Case is touring Australia for a series of sideshows to accompany her appearance at Golden Plains.
“I’m excited too, cannot waaaiiit to come back,” she buzzes in a sing-song tone of her return to The ‘Sup, last performing with the New Pornographers at Meredith 2006.
“We played before Rose Tattoo,” she remembers, punctuated with another cartoonish “aaawwweeesome!”
Speaking of the Canadian indie rock collective, Case says the New Pornographers have “been working on a new record for a while now and I actually have my final vocal in the studio with them.” Meaning not too much longer until a follow-up to 2010’s Together.
It mightn’t be four years until the next Neko Case album, either. “I do have some songs… there’s a few melodies here and there, but mostly just lyrics at the moment but there are a bunch in the works.”
Hopefully what life serves up before the next album isn’t as stricken, even if the singer-songwriter is more than up to the challenge.
The difficult four years that led to the creation of The Worse Things Get… is a period that Case described, “took 10 years hostage and gave me back 12.”
So with the philosophy of those words etched deep into her album, ultimately, what was the biggest lesson learned in that time? “That’s a really good question…”
There’s a long pause – uninterrupted by her pets – as she genuinely gathers to articulate a response with the same sincerity that manoeuvres her music.
“The less I know the more comfortable I am. That the more I just give in to knowing anything about the world, or what’s supposed to happen or what the rules are, or what’s expected of me or what’s normal in my society. That I should trust myself more.”
It’s a thoughtful, long-winded response, but even then it doesn’t cover as much ground as The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight. The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.
Neko Case Golden Plains 2014 Sideshows
Sydney: 3rd March, Sydney Opera House
Brisbane: 5th March, Hi Fi
Adelaide: 7th March, Fowlers Live
Tickets on sale now from www.handsometours.com
Also performing at:
Golden Plains 2014 Dates, Tickets
Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre
March 8th – 10th, 2014
SOLD OUT
