It's Case's most honest and in-your-face, lyrically powerful, solo record yet. Rousing guitar-heavy tunes Man and Bracing For Sunday melt and blend into gentler, spine-tingling songs such as the a cappella Nearly Midnight, Honolulu and Calling Cards.
Then there's the menacing Where Did I Leave That Fire.
"That song is about trying to have a laugh at your horrifying depression," she says.
Case explains that the album emerged from a three-year period of grief and mourning after she lost her parents. "I never slowed down to grieve and then I paid the price. I don't want to seem like I'm saying my experience of grief was so much more poignant than everyone else's, it was actually just a super dirty, shitty, yucky bacteria-infested time that everybody goes through.
"I couldn't have made a pretty record and not have the smell lines coming off me - like the cartoon smell lines to show it was a huge bummer. I was like, well I've had a core audience for long enough, I just need to trust them and just go, 'This is what's happening you guys - here you go'.
"Some of us express our sadness with punching," Case says. "I don't really try to hide anything, I just punch at it."
Neko Case's new album is out September 6.
