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Aug 14, 2009sit_walk rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Let the world take note: Neko Case has arrived. Even more than her justly-lauded Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, Middle Cyclone transcends all boundaries to thrill us with an utterly distinctive voice and songs soaked in the tension between music’s primal pulses and rural poetic experimentalism. Don’t say, don’t mention, don’t even THINK “alt-country”. This is songwriting of the highest order. Witness her evocation of childhood summers on “Magpie to the Morning” as she sings, “Run an airtight mission, a Cousteau expedition, To find a diamond at the bottom of the drain”. Witness mother nature’s savagery as a shark (Case?) takes “half your leg and both your lungs” on “People Got A Lotta Nerve”. And bear witness as Case wryly declares, “I’m not the man you think I am” (“Vengeance is Sleeping”). Well. Tough, dry, and darkly comic, Middle Cyclone may not exactly slop over with easy comfort, but it’ll keep you very good company on the road.