The album artwork for Neko Case's latest release, Middle Cyclone, depicts her crouching on the hood of a car brandishing a spear, a clear indication she is ready to joust. Whereas her previous artwork echoed the music's depiction of a melancholy (or barely conscious) songwriter, Middle Cyclone is Case's most poppy, if not most commercially ambitious, album to date. But do not let that scare you off.
The song most clearly spawned from the jousting Case is ""People Got A Lotta Nerve,"" essentially alt-country's version of Destiny's Child's ""Independent Women."" Case qualifies her self-interest in the chorus when she gleefully sings, ""I'm a man-man-maneater.""
The best word to describe her lyrics is sophisticated. She sings with raw emotion, but succeeds in sounding purely objective through each song. On the lead track ""This Tornado Loves You,"" she explains how she ""waited with a glacier's patience"" before she embodied a tornado and ""smashed every transformer with every trailer / ‘til nothing was standing 65 miles wide."" But don't misinterpret that for Case being a nut. The destruction was only internal—the transformer and trailers are her ransacked heart, the gaping terrain her empty soul and the tornado her futile attempts at reconciliation.
Despite her attempts at energetic pop, she seems to wear out part of the way through. On the title track she sings, exasperated, that she ""Can't scrape together quite enough to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love."" And as exciting as the empowered, giddy Case is on parts of the album, this morose, minimalist sound is the clear highlight.
Likewise, ""Magpie To The Morning"" accentuates Case's extraordinary talent. She uses aviary dialogue to detail an attempt to ""outrun sorrow,"" and a ""Cousteau expedition to find a diamond at the bottom of the drain.""
But as impressive as the highs on Middle Cyclone are, they don't last the full 15 tracks. ""Don't Forget Me"" sounds like the Hallmark version of her earlier work, and songs like ""Red Tide,"" ""Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth"" and the 31-minute loop of crickets on ""Marais La Nuit"" are no more than excess filler. Even ""Polar Nettles"" forced its way onto the track list.
Still, she cloaks her shortcomings with songs like ""I'm An Animal,"" on which she proclaims that ""Heaven will smell like the airport / but I may never get there to prove it.""
By the end of the album, Neko Case's new image takes on a different meaning. It evokes an image of neo-chariot warfare, appropriately placing her as the indie rock goddess. Commercially, she might still be crouched, ready to pounce, but her songs are as heartbreaking as ever.
That's not to say that Middle Cyclone isn't a progression, but she's not carving herself a new niche. Middle Cyclone is filled with the same devastating honesty that once saw album artwork of her lying on the floor, strung out on emotion. This time, Case, as is the case with Middle Cyclone and the rest of her discography, is able to stand on her own two feet.
