There’s something really freaky about Neko Case’s warped eye on the cover of her latest album, which has the lengthy title The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You. Fortunately, there’s a sweet alternative cover on the deluxe edition of this new album which has her wielding a sword and saves me from staring to long at whatever’s going on here. Plus the three extra tacks on the deluxe edition are pretty great and worth listening to anyway.
This album’s lead single, as far as I know without looking it up, was “Man,” a fucking kick-ass jam that seems cut from the same cloth as the best tracks off Middle Cyclone, Case’s last album. But The Worse Things Get… is actually a much more emotional, personal album. No song represents that better than “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,” an a capella retelling of an uncomfortable event Case experienced in Hawaii.
This album didn’t knock my socks off like Middle Cyclone, but it’s often the case for me that I really like the first album I hear by an artist more than anything they follow it with… Maybe that’s a real problem of mine. But The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You has definitely grown on me over the past month or so, to the point that I felt I should actually write something about it, unlike so much of what I listen to.
Favorite Tracks: “Man,” “Calling Cards,” “Ragtime”