Difficult Loves

The career of versatile, velvet-voiced chanteuse Neko Case has taken many fascinating turns and trajectories since she ditched the punk-rock that served her adolescence so well in favour of diving headfirst into the world of country music at the tail-end of the '90s. Her early records predominantly featured country standards, but once she began penning her own material Case soon found her feet planted firmly in alt-country terrain – an important distinction from the pure country she'd initially embraced – and every subsequent release has inched her towards more traditional singer-songwriter realms, albeit with her penchant for intriguing arrangements still firmly intact.

Fortunately this incremental shift in style has found favour with pundits and punters alike. Her 2009 effort Middle Cyclone – her fifth studio album – debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 and topped the US indie charts, and was also nominated for two Grammys. You'd imagine that this would put a lot of pressure on the follow-up effort for someone whose career had taken so long to scale such heady heights, but Case took this all in her considerable stride.

“It's funny, my friend Kathleen Judge and I did the artwork for the last record, and it was nominated for a Grammy for the music [for Best Contemporary Folk Album] but it was also nominated for the artwork [Best Recording Package] and that really freaked us out!” she giggles. “We were, like, 'Oh my God, how are we going to do that good again?' We were so freaked out about doing a good job on the artwork that I wasn't really worried about the music too much! We both found it pretty hilarious in the end.”

The follow-up – the awkwardly titled The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You – also topped the indie charts and garnered a Grammy nomination (this time for Best Alternative Music Album), even though its gestation was fraught with turmoil and hardship. A string of familial deaths led to a deep and debilitating depression, one which dogged the entire recording process. It's a deeply personal collection – lyrically featuring less of the metaphor rife in her past work – and the effect is both immediate and incredibly touching.

“There's still a few songs with metaphor, but [a lot of it is] pretty straight-ahead. Some things I just couldn't make super straight-ahead – on one hand they're personal and factual, and on the other I was, like, 'How do you even describe feeling like that? How do you even do that?'

“To be totally honest I don't really remember writing all the lyrics – I don't really remember writing a lot of it, because I was going through such a hard time. I would work every day, but that doesn't mean that I remember everything that I worked on. I was going through a hard time and just working because I knew it was good for me and it was something I should do, and I didn't want to stop because then I'd have to face reality.”

Was it at least nice to emerge from that personal darkness with something so beautiful to her name? “Yeah, I don't feel like it was for nothing. I learned a lot from it. A lot of people ask me if the recording was cathartic and I can't lie, it was not cathartic… It was a pretty cruddy time, so the record happened in spite of the fact that I felt so crappy rather than that [bad situation being] the inspiration behind its creation.”

With a menagerie of famous friends turning out to help in the studio – including members of her power-pop side project The New Pornographers, My Morning Jacket and Calexico – Case had plenty of familiar shoulders to cry on.

“Yes, I'm a very lucky person that these kind and talented people are willing to work with me. It wouldn't even be a record without Calexico. [Long-time backing vocalist] Kelly Hogan and I always refer to them as our 'husband band' – if our band had to marry another band we'd basically be married to Calexico. We would have had that marriage for the last 15 years or something – we love them so much. It's always like a family reunion every time, and that's one of the nice things about inviting people that you really love to play, it becomes a time in your life – it's not just a job with a deadline, it's also really fun going out to dinner afterwards and catching up with everyone. I'm on tour all the time, so it's like a means to an end – it's how I can have these amazing people in my life and get the job done at the same time. It serves two purposes.”