The ultimate cat case guide

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5. Cat case “Wait a minute”

When Case released his album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood in 2006, he described it as the only “autobiographical song” he had yet written. When asked for more details, she said in an interview with AV Club: It's not a metaphor about someone else. This is not a story about a small piece of my life about someone else or a fictional character. ” In that sense, it represents a new evolutionary step in Case's songwriting.

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6. Neko Case “This Tornado Loves You”

The opening track of Case's excellent 2009 album, Middle Cyclone, is sung from the perspective of an anthropomorphic, heartbroken tornado, and is one of the many songs Case wrote while trying to remember one of his dreams. This is one of the songs. Her friend and collaborator Paul Rigby spoke to me about the song's structure, citing it as one of the many songs that allow Case to expand her perspective beyond just the human realm. I did. “As a human being, it's pretty cool to know about the weather system,” he told me.

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7. The cat incident: “The tiger has spoken”

Is there a song that always makes you cry the moment you press the play button, no matter your mood? This is my work, but if a melody gets too stuck in my head, I'm done. The title track of Case's 2004 live album, an ode to tigers killed in captivity, is perhaps her sharpest and most poignant extension of compassion for the animal world. Someone pass me a tissue!

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8. Cat case “Hellon”

This smoldering title track from Case's latest album once again showcases her singular lyricism and knack for merging her own singular consciousness with the plurality of the natural world. “I'm not messed up,” she sings. “I am the wilderness.”

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9. Neko Case “Night is still coming”

Case wrote one of my favorite albums, 2013's The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, while battling depression. (“I couldn’t run away from being sad anymore,” she told me. “I had no choice but to do my time.”) She fought that battle with courage and a dash of dark humor in this heart-pounding story. I record my songs and exorcise my demons. A cathartic chorus.

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10. Neko Case “I wish I was the moon”

Finally, this yearning ballad from “The Blacklist” is one of Case's most beloved songs, and for good reason. In her memoirs, she wrote that she wrote this song just before her father died, saying that at the time, “the sadness of my father's situation was very much on my mind.'' “I'm so tired,” she sings, before launching into a lyric that perfectly sums up her signature imaginative, otherworldly melancholy: “I wish I was the moon tonight.”