Neko Case
The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You

«This is what I want you to know: there is the same mystery in separation as in meeting. In both cases, a door opens. In the first, it opens onto the past; in the second, onto the future. The door remains the same». (Elie Wiesel)

“The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.” That is, roughly, “The worse things I receive, the harder I fight them, the harder I fight, the more I love you”. It's the idea of an unequal struggle, with uneven odds, with life. The artist from Virginia experienced a deep personal crisis following the sudden death of both parents and the passing of a grandmother to whom she was enormously attached. Our bond with our parents is so intimate that it is a mystery, so much so that a fundamental tenet of the idea of the afterlife in Judaism states that the heart of the fathers will be turned to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers. The present and piercing pain of losing loved ones obliges us to reconcile earth and sky, at a point of exchange between the past and the future.

Neko’s femininity, which we know as proud and resolute, argues and thins, becomes unusually vulnerable, in an emotionally raw but stubbornly flowing work, with the not-unfamiliar formal elegance, returning her to us, in the end, strong in her suffering: “While you fly beside me you will discover my weakness / I am not fighting for your freedom / I am fighting to be wise”. There is a scar on the heart, to be healed every new morning. Every life is creative. And every creation implies a drama, the repercussions of which await redemption. Solitude, then, which is not isolation, is dramatic and ritual, but also propitious.

Supporting her is an exceptional cast of friends and colleagues: the Calexico this time in full, the My Morning Jacket, songwriter M.Ward, Steve Turner (guitarist of Mudhoney!), avant-garde musician Marc Ribot, Paul Rigby (co-author of half of the tracks), John Rauhouse, Tom V. Ray on bass, Howe Gelb (Giant Sand), Steve Berlin from Los Lobos (baritone sax), A.C. Newman (The New Pornographers/Zumpano), the voices of Tracyanne Campbell (Camera Obscura), Rachel Flotard (Visqueen) and Kelly Hogan (a season with the Drive-By Truckers).

The sound is rich with solutions, sumptuous, dynamic, fragrant, less essential than usual, with the usual predominance of the acoustic side. Beautiful arrangements, full but sober, that do not weigh down but enhance passionate and transparent songwriting. Less visceral, less wild compared to the past, but clear and focused, as much as the spiritual pursuit underlying it. A golden album, where more than alt-country there is a cohesive and cleverly alternative pop-rock, gladly resorting to folksy dictates. The vocal interpretation is once again warm, enveloping, vivid, willful, strong – as always – but with great naturalness and capable of surprising restraint. The voice is tremendously clear and powerful.

We savor the bitter sweetness of “I’m From Nowhere” (accompanied by a lone guitar) on our lips, or in our hearts, the storm of emotional fragments and ruins, swept up in the vortex of the opening “Wild Creatures”. A flash: the exceptional power and subversive rhythm of “Man”, electrified by Steve Turner’s stony embroidery, Case recites: "I am a man / what she brought me to light for / I was not her identity crisis / This was a project". The enticing a cappella virtuosity of “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu”, with the backing vocals of Campbell, Hogan, and Flotard, is a pearl that only needs darkness to shine. “Afraid”, a cover of Nico, is close to the eidetic beauty, the perfect original, of which it can only (and that’s no small thing) be a worthy copy. Another peak, this time in an inexplicable balance between the solemn and the absorbed, is the mid-tempo of the closing “Ragtime”, featuring the brass section of the Calexico, Wenk and Valenzuela, and unleashing a feverish, magnetic, and intoxicating triumph.

It concludes, therefore, an artistic and existential journey, aimed at exorcising the black beast of death. Bending the dark prison. To see, with eyes fixed on evil, the light.

The apparent halt of life is a cell of existence itself. To meet the freedom of a new genesis. And to bet on life once more.