Neko Case’s new album is called The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.

That’s a pretty personal statement and this is a pretty personal album. In the past, Case largely wrote songs that were (at least seemingly) fictional, with stories about colorful characters and criminal activity that often earned her the label of a “country-noir” singer-songwriter. Here, Case seems to be the main character on the album as she sorts through her feelings on being a 42-year old, life-long bachelorette who has spent the majority of her adult life as a touring musician.

Case’s perspective on writing the album can be more thoroughly understood through this excellent interview by Consequence of Sound, where Case describes going through a number of personal issues after the release of her last album, including depression and her father’s death. In the aforementioned interview she states that The Worse Things Get is “really autobiographical because my mind just didn’t have room for anything else.”

Further context can be had by becoming acquainted with Case’s constantly-updated (and frequently, very funny) Twitter account, where it’s nearly impossible to reconcile how she is able to tour, record music, and run a farm in Vermont, with her ubiquitous online presence. She loves animals and nature, is unabashedly foul-mouthed and honest, and easily banters with fans and nationally renowned comedians alike as if everyone in the world is a potential best friend.

From there, we get to the content of the album itself. Musically, Case is on the same path she started treading with Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and Middle Cyclone.  This is meticulously produced folk-rock with heavy emphasis on melodies to show off Case’s phenomenal vocal talent. Thematically, she’s looking at a few things here but chief among them is her level of comfort with her identity as a single woman in her forties, struggling against the societal norms that would compel her to at least have been married (maybe divorced) and and/or a mother by this point in her life.


On “Man,” the first single from The Worse Things Get, we talked about how Case appropriated the stereotypical trappings of “manliness” to point out how she is equally as capable as most men (if not more so) to reside in the provinces of traditionally male-dominated realms. Case actually raises this concern to some degree on each of the first four songs on the album.

On the excellent opener, “Wild Creatures,” Case sings “hey little girl, would you like to be the king’s pet or the king?” She’s presumably speaking to herself as she immediately answers: “I’d choose odorless and invisible, but otherwise, I’d chose the king.” It seems to be another defiant statement of choosing a self-reliant path over conformity, but the postscript somewhat complicates this sentiment: “even though it sounds the loneliest… and my brother’s hands would poison me.” Being an autonomous individual might seem great in theory but it does inherently suggest solitude. Additionally, it makes you more likely to be the subject of envy or disdain for not simply “doing what you should,” especially when you’re treading on the long-established domain of “men,” who tend to be a rather territorially bunch.

The conflict between opting for the unconventional and the resultant isolation is further explored on “Night Still Comes” when Cases asks: “is it cause I’m a girl? If I puked up some sonnets would you call me a miracle?” It’s a brilliantly scathing line but again, it’s immediately followed by indications of detachment, and perhaps all-out reclusiveness, when she states: “swallowed waist-deep in the core of the forest, arboreal feast, let it finish me please.”

On “I’m From Nowhere,” Case continues to derive loneliness from struggling against gender stereotypes as well as from the practical side effects of living a habitually itinerant lifestyle (another reoccurring theme on the album). When she sings “I was surprised, when you called me a lady, cause I’m still not sure that’s what I wanna be,” she’s rejecting the traditional expectation that women act “lady-like” but she then spins it into a joke about how she “remembers the 80’s” and “its puffy sleeves” and she’d “gladly wear the pants into the next century.” It’s a slightly more modest take on the issue, as she ends up at the pensive realization that her life choices have also contributed to her feeling as if she’s “from nowhere.”


Elsewhere on the album, Case re-visits some familiar territory. “Bracing for Sunday” is basically a blueprint for anyone looking to write a Neko Case ballad-noir (“I only ever held one love, her name was Marianne, she died having a child by her brother, he died because I murdered him.”) Neko also covers the Nico song, “Afraid,” and somewhere in a distant universe, two planets collide. It’s a melody that was practically made for Case to sing and its refrain of “you are beautiful and you are alone” is perfectly apt in the context of the rest of the album. “Calling Cards,” “Local Girl” and “City Swan” all keep up the theme of emotional and physical distance, and are all so well-written it’s easy to begin taking Case’s songwriting skills for granted by the end of the album.

The penultimate song on The Worse Things Get is “Where Did I Leave that Fire,” which was featured in the stunning “trailer” for the album released earlier this summer. The track begins with what sounds like a submarine attempting to use radar, (which, is odd, as you would think that underwater would be one of the last places one might find that fire). These detailed production elements, however, build suspense and give the record an underlying sense of menace as if it were recorded in the aftermath of some mysterious disappearance. (Listen also to the vague space-radio transmission sounds between the two choruses on “Wild Creatures.”)

The “fire” here seems to be a reference to a sort of inner strength or spirit and the song ends with the absurdly whimsical set of lines: “I do believe we have a fire lady, you can pick it up if you come down with ID.” With fire presumably re-obtained, Case then ends the album on an upbeat note with “Ragtime,” a celebratory track where Case seems to have found peace with her sense of identity: “I’ll reveal myself invincible soon, I am one and the same, I am useful and strange.”


One of the most memorable tracks on the album though might be “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,” an entirely a cappella song telling the story of Case witnessing a young child being sworn at and neglected by their mother. The song is meant to serve as a reminder to the child that this event, which they might not even remember, actually happened and will probably end up shaping the person they become. She sings, “you’ll hear yourself complain, but don’t you ever shut up, please kid, have your say, cause I still love you, even if I never see you again.”

The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You is a lovely-sounding mouthful of poetry but it also might be a somewhat logical statement.

I was an English major in college but I had to take at least one “math-type” credit to complete my degree.  I chose a “logic” class because it seemed to be the least “mathy” of all of the math class options. I don’t remember much from that class (which always reminds me of Patton Oswalt’s “Physics for Poets” bit) but I do recall something called the “transitive law.” It’s the one that says: if A = B, and B = C, then A = C. So if “The Worse Things Get” = A, and “The Harder I Fight” = B, and “The More I Love You” = C, then, according to the transitive law of album titles, what Case really might be saying here is: “The Worse Things Get… The More I Love You.”

Bad things happen sometimes, kid. Your mom might swear at you and neglect you, you might struggle against the inequality inherent in the system, you will get lonely, your parents will die. But the worse these things get (the harder she’ll fight, the harder she’ll fight) the more Neko Case will love you.