""My job at that moment is to conjure a small dust devil of unreality around us, to pull it up out of a sticky, shiny carpet and flappy, beer-soaked speaker cones," she writes. "I have to make it out of words and sounds and looks.""
"So has been her ethos for the past three decades. At this point it feels wrong to call Case a country artist when her work most closely resembles a feral strain of baroque pop- Nilsson at a truck stop, Kate Bush running with raccoons as well as foxes."
"But its overwhelming feelings are gratitude and awestruck revelation. "I'm a meteor shattering around you/And I'm sorry/I've become a solar system/Since I found you," she declares on lead single "Wreck." Neon Grey was made in collaboration with the 20-piece PlainsSong Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Sara Parkinson and arranged by Tom Hagerman, and recorded live with the full band. The result is at once all-encompassing and strikingly intimate."
Neko Case conjures theatrical immediacy in performance, creating a fragile unreality around ordinary venues. Her music defies simple country classification, merging a feral strain of baroque pop with cinematic, neo-noir tones. The new album Neon Grey Midnight Green functions as both a retrospective and a daring, immediate record, trading previous darkness for renewed wonder. The title evokes Pacific Northwest skies; the songs oscillate between vengeance and foreboding and overwhelming gratitude and revelation. The record was recorded live with the 20-piece PlainsSong Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Sara Parkinson and arranged by Tom Hagerman, producing arrangements that feel simultaneously expansive and intimately close to Case's crystalline voice.
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