Middle Cyclone

Neko Case is interested in the elemental on her new album, Middle Cyclone. Let's start with the title song--it's not the only song that refers to tornadoes. The album kicks off with "This Tornado Loves You," in which she sings from the point of the view of the storm: "My love I am the speed of sound/I left them motherless, fatherless/their souls dangling inside-out from their mouths/but it's never enough--I want you." This is the opening track, which sets the stage for a wondrous experience, albeit a dark one.

Then comes "People Got a Lotta Nerve," which is about man-eating fish: "You know they call them killer whales?/But you seem surprised when it pinned you down/To the bottom of of the tank/where you you can't turn around/It took half your leg and both your lungs." If we haven't gotten the point, she sums it up in "I'm An Animal."

Nature is both a threat to man and also a nurturer, as Case includes a cover of the song "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth." The last song on the record, "Red Tide," ends things rather ambiguously: "The clouds say hush/but the chainsaws mush on/Through the cluster and Columbia/Salty tentacles shrink in the sun/But the red tide is over/The mollusks they have won."

The other theme on this record is the midwest. Case did live in Chicago for a while, but she's not really a native. It is therefore somewhat remarkable that she nails the plains sound. After all, the swath from Michigan to Texas is also known as tornado alley, and this record is like a tornado--strangely and terrifyingly beautiful. This is the midwest of John Dillinger, In Cold Blood, and Virgil Starkweather, not Grant Wood. Consider the opening of "The Pharaohs:" "We were married in the mirrored hall when I was sixteen/You spoke the words 'I love girls in white leather jackets'/That was good enough for me." Or the masterpiece of this record, "Prison Girls," which is like a Cormac McCarthy novel set to music: "Who am I tonight?/My hotel room won't remember me/From darkness enter prison girls/Pushing mops and kicking pails/Now's my chance, I clasp my chest/And declare unto my audience/'I love your long shadows and your gunpowder eyes.'" These lyrics are accompanied by a sinister guitar riff by Paul Rigby. Brilliant.

Musically, Case continues to break away from her alt-country tag. Frankly, I can't think of what to call her style, it's somewhat unto itself. Her voice is singular. She likens it to a siren; I'm reminded of the sound those tubes that are swung in arcs make. She would make a great Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun.

Neko Case is a wonderful original, and this album has grown on me and won't leave. And that's a good thing. I do however, question her putting a thirty-minute plus track at the end that is only the sound of crickets chirping. I'm not sure if this is to mess up those who would play it on a shuffle mode, or maybe it's for those who are listening to the record before they go to sleep, and the track serves as white noise to help them nod off. And how fucking cool is that album cover?