Neko Case - Hell-On

Bandcamp Daily

On “Hell-On,” Case attacks life’s tragedies with both realism and acerbic wit.

The Guardian 100

(Bella Union)

When Neko Case’s house burned down in 2017, her local newspaper invaded her privacy to a degree that made her fear the return of the stalker she had recently bankrupted herself to defeat. The journalist publicised her furious, private response, which told her something about how women’s life stories are stolen from them, how quickly their anger is spun as hysteria. Hell-On, Case’s seventh album, addresses this theft at the hands of selfish writers and cruel men – and finds Case asserting the facts of her life with daring candour and wit.

When it comes to theft, Case favours dense, naturalistic imagery and thorny parable: the “last lion of albion” slaughtered for profit and admired only in death as a marketable symbol; the Fleetwood Mac-inspired Halls of Sarah, a muse to poets who “do an odious business loving womankind as lions love Christians so”. “My voice is not the liquid waves,” she warns on the title track’s flinty waltz. There’s foreboding to these deep, eerie songs with their ticking tempos, mysterious synthesiser sounds and bright vocal harmonies left hanging rather than resolving neatly. They contrast beautifully with the brighter pop moments – Bad Luck’s clarion 1960s strut and a heartfelt cover of Sleep All Summer – and the starker language that Case deploys in her own histories.

Pitchfork 77

On her self-produced seventh solo LP, Neko Case brings on a bunch of collaborators for a dense album that searches for connection amid human cruelty and chaos.