A Whirlwind Of Predictability

Artist: Neko Case
Album: Middle Cyclone
Year: 2009
Grade: 3.5 pretzels

I remember, way back in 2005, it seemed Canada was the next great frontier for music. Wave after wave of great bands seemed to be migrating down from the northern border: Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade and Islands, all from Montreal, reinvigorated indie rock. Death From Above 1979 and Junior Boys showed two new ways for electronic music to evolve. Hell, even Godspeed! You Black Emperor seemed to be part of this overwhelming Canuck invasion. Of course, a few years down the line, most of these bands have lost their hype, some even vanishing all together. Canada’s brief stint as the new mecca of rock music appears to have ended.

However, we still have Neko Case. Although she’s best known as the silvery voiced siren from the New Pornographers, her solo albums usually eclipse anything the Pornos have to offer. Middle Cyclone is no exception, delivering yet another set of bold, downbeat country-inflected songs. As always, Case’s extraordinary voice does the majority of the heavy lifting. She’s blessed with an incredibly versatile set of pipes that can blow you away or whisper softly in your ear, depending on what’s required for the song at hand. Coupled with her talent for writing sharp, emotionally charged lyrics, she’s become one of the shining lights in the realm of alt-country and indie rock.

Middle Cyclone is definitely a strong album. However, the one glaring fault, if you want to see it as such, is its predictability. Ever since her stellar 2002 album Blacklisted, Case seems stuck in a particular orbit. The usual down-and-out country stories and bluesy narratives haven’t changed. There might be new names or new chords, but the stories being told seem like rehashes of older songs. Of course, Case executes these with the same talent and skill as she always has, but there’s certainly nothing surprising going on here. The best songs (“People Got A Lotta Nerve”, “This Tornado Loves You”) sound great because they sound like great Neko Case songs of years past. The last true song on the album, “Red Tide” (the record ends with half an hour of swampy crickets chirping), seems to me to be the only song on Middle Cyclone I haven’t heard in some variation before. The ominous, descending melody does a fantastic job evoking the paranoia the lyrics are conveying. Now, I can’t fault Case for continuing to record the same stuff if it sounds good, but I can't help but wonder what other dimensions she might be able to bring to her music.

With all the New Pornographers’ constituate members putting out records this year, it’s inevitable some comparisons will be made. A.C. Newman’s Get Guilty already set the bar high and all signs point to Dan Bejar’s album with his Swan Lake collaborators as being another strong competitor. Middle Cyclone sounds like it can definitely go toe to toe with both of those albums, which bodes well for the New Pornographers if they can fully harness these three voices. However, whereas the other two records seem to show noticeable artistic growth, Neko Case continues to sound the same. She still sounds good, but treading water usually doesn’t cut it in the music industry. I’m very curious to see what she does next.