As if cosmically summoned, every handful of years the GRAMMY-nominated iconoclast Neko Case breaks to the surface with a new album and reminds listeners that she is one of our greatest living songwriters - perpetually becoming more fearless and adventurous. Arriving September 26, today she announces ‘Neon Grey Midnight Green’, her simultaneously biggest-sounding and most intimate-feeling album yet. Self-produced by Case, the first single “Wreck” is an exploration of the soul-shattering feeling that is finding love with another fallible human being. “I know it’s selfish / But you’re the sun now! / And it’s a big job /
One you didn’t apply for... / But maybe you want this too? / Do I look like the sun to you?” she enquires as the music lifts to the sky. Listen to “Wreck” below.
Listen to “Wreck”: https://youtu.be/gLwev5sWQXM
Her first new music this decade, ‘Neon Grey Midnight Green’ follows 2018’s ‘Hell-On’, an eclectic piece that The Guardian called “a pitch-perfect roar of female defiance.” Her latest is no less urgent but carries a deep blue streak of sentimentality in its incandescent blaze. The album pays tribute to the musicians, producers and
activists who have passed away in recent years, all artists Neko was lucky enough to call not just influences but close friends. She rises on the shoulders of her musical heroes, using the tools they lent her to create her most inspired work.
More than any of her past albums, 'Neon Grey Midnight Green' was laid down live with a full band – even breaths and shirt-sleeve rustlings were kept in the final mix as a reminder that “humans were here.” The album’s recording primarily took place at Case’s own Vermont studio, Carnassial Sound, with additional sessions in Denver, Colorado with the PlainsSong Chamber Orchestra and in Portland, Oregon with Tucker Martine. “There are so few producers who are women, nonbinary, or trans,” says Case, who identifies as gender fluid and uses she/her pronouns. “People don’t think of us as an option. I’m proud to say I produced this record. It is my vision. It is my veto power. It is my taste.”
Listening to Case’s music will teach you about this world— human nature’s cruelty, perseverance and terrifying beauty, but the natural world as well — the moon and the stars, bees, lions and magpies. Should you encounter a wayward soul who has never heard her music, you might respond, “Well, she once sang from the perspective of a tornado,” as if to say: there’s no physical form that could stop her potent voice and evocative storytelling.
Case’s memoir The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You was released in January and reached #5 on the New York Times nonfiction best sellers list. Raised “by two dogs and a space heater” in Washington state, the book’s vibrant wordplay and unflinching humor were a familiar balm to fans; as The Washington Post wrote in a glowing review, it “hits you in the same places her songs do: heart and gut, funny bone and sad bone.” Case has also been hard at work composing the musical adaptation of the 1991 Academy Award-winning motion picture Thelma & Louise after being personally selected by the original screenwriter and Academy Award winner Callie Khouri. Said Case of her memoir: “I hope my story will cast a spell of love, invite everyone inside, and smash the illusion that we have no connection to each
other.”
In the week following the album’s release, Case and her band will embark on a nationwide fall tour that starts October 1 in Woodstock, New York. All upcoming dates are listed below.
TOUR DATES
October 1 - Woodstock, NY @ Levon Helm Studios # SOLD OUT
October 2 - Washington, D.C. @ Lincoln Theatre #
October 4 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Met #
October 5 - Durham, NC @ Durham Performing Arts Center #
October 7 - Richmond, VA @ The National #
October 8 - Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel #
October 9 - Pelham, TN @ The Caverns #
October 10 - Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse #
October 11 - Charleston, SC @ Charleston Music Hall #
October 14 - Cincinnati, OH @ The Taft Theatre #
October 15 - St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant #
October 16 - Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed #
October 17 - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue #
October 18 - Milwaukee, WI @ The Pabst Theater #
October 20 - Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall #
October 22 - New York, NY @ Beacon Theatre #
October 23 - Boston, MA @ The Wilbur #
October 24 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall #
October 25 - Cleveland, OH @ The Agora #
November 7 - Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theatre %
November 8 - Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up % SOLD OUT
November 9 - Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up %
November 10 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Bellwether %
November 11 - San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic %
November 13 - Vancouver, BC @ The Vogue %
November 14 - Seattle, WA @ The Paramount %
November 15 - Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater % SOLD OUT
November 16 - Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater %
November 18 - Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory %
November 19 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Eccles Theater %
November 20 - Denver, CO @ Paramount Theatre %
November 21 - Albuquerque, NM @ El Rey Theater %
November 23 - Dallas, TX @ Longhorn Ballroom %
November 24 - San Antonio, TX @ Tobin Center %
November 25 - Austin, TX @ Paramount Theatre %
w/ Des Demonas #
w/ John Grant %