The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You (Deluxe Edition)
On her sixth studio album, the incomparable Neko Case returns to the exquisitely dark, structurally complex, yet unfailingly lovely songwriting that made her 2006 landmark *Fox Confessor Brings the Flood* so transcendent. “Night Still Comes” is Case at her most achingly gorgeous, even while singing tormented lyrics reminiscent of Fiona Apple’s “Every Single Night” (“My brain makes drugs to keep me slow… but not even the masons know what drug will keep night from coming”). “Bracing for Sunday” finds Case singing matter-of-factly about murdering the man responsible for a friend’s death. “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu” is an appalled a capella lullaby to a child Case witnessed being viciously berated by his mother, while the darkly baroque “Afraid” gives us the gift of Neko covering Nico, the former Velvet Underground muse. Still, the album is not without lighter moments such as plaintive love song “Calling Cards” or the resilient, horn-swirling closing track, “Ragtime.”
Neko Case’s remarkable new album, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You is an exorcism of a dark period of her life, and her most plainly autobiographical album to date. It also could be the most potent record of her career.
“I was surprised when you called me a lady / ’Cuz I’m still not so sure that’s what I want to be,” Neko Case sings on “I’m From Nowhere” on her latest album The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.
Spurred on by the death of friends and family, Case's latest is a tumultuous ride chartering a course between love, life and loss.
Neko Case doesn’t make things easy on herself. Her voice is so powerful, nuanced and pure that if she turned her mind to it…
Check out our album review of Artist's The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You on Rolling Stone.com.
At this point, Neko Case has atmospheric alt-country down to a science, and her last few releases have been characterized by nocturnal Ameri...
Two themes rear their heads in Neko Case's songwriting: a deft touch when it comes to showing us the icky, corporeal aspects of life and a fondness for externalizing internal turmoil.
Neko Case's recent struggle with depression informs the country rocker's raw sixth set, writes <strong>Ally Carnwath</strong>
While not strictly a confessional album, The Worse Things Get builds its momentum out of isolated, deeply personal moments.
When Neko Case put out the excellent Fox Confessor Brings the Flood back in 2006, it was a logical endpoint of the gothic country sound she'd been using...
Neko Case's sixth album emerges from the fog of depression she found herself in at the time of its writing, and it makes for a strange and powerful listen, writes <strong>Maddy Costa</strong>
Album Reviews: Neko Case - The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You
Neko Case - The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight... review: I'll reveal myself when I'm ready, I'll reveal myself invincible soon.
Flame-haired songstress figures out where she left her fire. CD review by Lisa-Marie Ferla