Neko case did not live in suburban Washington state. Where she grew up( the southeast side of Tacoma/outskirts of Lakewood)was and continues to be a hotbed of poverty, drugs, and pain. I had my first teaching artists assignments in Lakewood school districts, and there were a LOT of poor, struggling white kids. This was a nice review, save that comment.

...but the critters at the end of the album are frogs- spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer) to be exact. Apparently some have criticized this track but I consider it a nice bonus, as the sound of spring peepers is one of my favorite sounds on earth.

In "Fever," which staggers like a junkyard blues -- love the prickly Hawaiian guitar -- Case sees gas pumps and jackknifed trucks and "sea birds choked in fishing line."

I think Berger means "Red Tide"; the lyrics to the song indicate this.

Thankyou - you beat me to it.

A

Methinks the reviewer needs to get out more if they think that this music is anything wild or animalistic. Neko Case is certainly a good singer, but when I went to youtube to hear the music, it was anything but smooth folk.

Could this possibly have been written any more vaguely and pretentiously? IS THE MUSIC GOOD? That's all I want to know.

Life finds meaning in dream images that burn, etched in the 3 a.m. of her soul.

I think I saw that sentence on a 14-year-old girl's myspace page status.

So you recollect "Middle Cyclone" in haunting solitude and while listening feel only the music's dazzling glow.

Seriously? Did you compose that sentence with magnets on your fridge?

Just churn out a volume of awkward poetry, get it out of your system, and then write intelligible reviews. Please.

We bought this album a few weeks back and have about played it to death.

IT IS WONDERFUL.

RUN TO THE MUSIC STORE AND BUY IT NOW

or you could just download it gratis from Vuze network.

Personally I find the last track annoying--I like peepers and crickets, but they're not musical creations of Case.

As a Case fan for some time now (I've seen her perform a handful of times and was at one of the shows where they taped The Tigers Have Spoken) I'm surprised by the amount of press that her animalistic concerns are getting this time around. From the dead/stuffed critters in her album art to the blood, birds, and foxes that have long haunted her songs, Case's lyrical/imagistic bag of tricks has remained fairly constant since her second record. She's certainly got her own little world going, and she's getting (even) better at writing about it.

I wonder if the wonder with which the casual rock press is approaching Middle Cyclone is the result of folks just not being steeped in America's song roots. Critters, violence, natural disasters, murder ballads -- all this Old Weird America, Harry Smith Anthology stuff is at the heart of America's folk tradition. Case (like Dylan, Williams, the Band, Guthrie, Springsteen, and many, many others) is simply refashioning these sources in her own image.

I have tickets for her show tonight in Raleigh. The counter on my iTunes shows "People Got a Lotta Nerve" has been played dozens of times since she posted an early download of the single back in Feb. I picked up a copy of Middle Cyclone at my local coffee shop where it sat next to the new U2 album released the same day. I noticed her bin was empty the very next morning and several times since then, while U2 has remained safely in stock (for whatever that's worth.) She played live over in Chapel Hill a couple of years ago and I was in awe how such a huge voice emanates from this petite woman with absolutely zero effort. It was as if just she opened her mouth it literally and filled the room.

...how much lousy prose the writer would have spilled if Ms. Case looked like, say, Deborah Iyall from Romeo Void.

And the New Pornographers are anything but three-chord pop. Try playing one of their songs sometime.

Whoa...A Romeo Void shout out. Nice.

Ms. Case spent four years in Vancouver BC attending the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and released her first albums (and many since) on Mint Records (a Vancouver label).

Hands down, the woman is a talent.

I first heard her band on a John Langford compilation.

About the same time I was eating up acres of covers penned by one Peter Case. My husband, a radio dj, informed me one day the two are sibs.

If you want to hear a great singer-songwriter, check out Peter Case; his songs have been covered from here to eternity-

This family is as talented as the sky.

Neko, Peter- keep 'em coming.

From a town fifty miles from Nirvana-land, birthplace of feral rock... a town you've never heard of.

I don't think Neko Case has a brother or possibly any siblings:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15neko-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Peter Case is considerably older than her (born in 1954) and grew up in Buffalo. Her parents had her very young and she's only 38.

From the same NYT article:

"Her father died not long ago, of a heart attack, at 56, and she seems more sympathetic than angry about his desperate existence. “I’ve been mourning my dad my whole life,” she says. Her mother was good to her as a little girl, Case says, but adds that later she was often left at home alone. “I spent a good deal of the time alone with dogs,” she told Harp magazine. “I’d sing and talk to the dogs and draw pictures.”

This is an amazing album. I don't think that Neko Case is the only person to careen through life like a cyclone. There's a fabulous disconnect between the song title "People have got some nerve" and the lyrics ("I'm a man-man-man-maneater). From my perspective, Neko Case uses this album to decimate the little itty bitty box that female pop stars are supposed to occupy.