Published earlier this year, Neko Case’s The Harder I Fight the More I Love You is a fascinating, often strange and affecting memoir, the work of a woman with a vast imagination and a unique sense of self. Case was born in Virginia but largely grew up south of Seattle. She left home at 15, the result of a lonely upbringing marked by her unstable, emotionally distant parents and her love of nature. The contents of The Harder I Fight the More I Love You will likely not come as a surprise to those familiar with Case’s nearly three-decade career as a songwriter and musician — its vivid prose is as singular as her mood-altering singing voice.
In 1994, after nearly a decade of soul-searching that would become a staple of her nomadic life, she enrolled in art school in Vancouver, Canada, where she also started playing drums in multiple post-punk outfits. Case came into her own when she switched to singing, employing a voice that is equal parts feral and tender. Her 1997 solo debut, The Virginian, leaned heavily into old-school country, drawing from the past but dosed with Case’s distinctive lyrics and twisted humor. But it was the one-two punch of her next record, 2000’s Furnace Room Lullaby, and her vocal contributions to power pop band The New Pornographers that would break her to a wider audience.
A quarter century later, Case has released her eighth studio effort, Neon Grey Midnight Green, which she produced all by herself for the first time — a dozen songs rife with melancholy and wonder. In fact, given the state of our current cultural moment, it often comes off more buoyant than some might expect.
“I absolutely refused to be overtaken by despair,” Case said in a recent interview with Pitchfork. “I wanted to remind people of their own power, that they still matter, and that resisting this weird, mechanized, grinding machine our world is turning into is important. These songs aren’t about that on the nose because I like leaving them open-ended for listeners to fit themselves into the picture.”
Mission accomplished, Neko.
Neko Case and Des Demonas play Taft Theatre on Oct. 14 at 7:30 p.m. More info: tafttheatre.org.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Oct. 1 print edition.
This article appears in Oct. 1-14.