The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You
by Steve
“Man” is the first full song from Neko Case’s new, wonderfully titled album, “The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You” and it is excellent. You should listen to it, if you haven’t already.
“Man” juggles a really catchy, driven tune with some rather fierce (I’m struggling for a better word here, as “fierce ” seems to have some corny and perhaps patronising connotations, but I guess my lack of suitable vocabulary will just have to leave me hanging on this word) lyrics toying with gender and is one of those rare songs that makes you dance and think, or something to that effect.
Meanwhile, the trailer for the album (see below) gives us a preview of the more atmospheric, ethereal side to the album. On the admittedly limited evidence this should be one of the better albums of the year – although my shortlist is rather short at the moment (Kurt Vile, The National, parts of the Daft Punk album, probably the Boards of Canada album when I get around to listening to it, and I’m struggling to think of much else).
Programming note – further request-y posts to follow this week, hopefully, plus perhaps more of these rather flimsy embedded-YouTube-video-laziness-type posts too. You lucky things.
Wait until next year 
You’ve posted a lot this week! I just had the craziest week of my life, and I’ve fallen behind on my RSS feeds. Going to get to them all, slowly but surely. I’m multitasking now; commenting on this article, listening to the embedded song, and reading the Future of Rock n Roll post.
Have you seen Neko Case perform live? If you ever get the chance, do it. Her albums are usually pretty good (I wasn’t a fan of her last one, but I’ve liked everything else she did) but they don’t capture quite how amazing her voice is. I saw her both solo and with the New Pornographers, and people always stopped talking when she played.
If you need some albums to round out your 2013 best-of list, check out Phosphorescent’s “Muchacho” and Foxygen’s “We are the 21st Century…” Between those two albums and The National I’m pretty happy with this year. I really liked what I heard on Kurt Vile’s album, but it’s so long that I haven’t yet been able to digest it all in one sitting.
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I hope you had a crazy week in a good way rather than a bad way, and hope things have calmed down for you now!
I’ve never seen Neko Case live, but would like to. I think her albums can be a bit patchy, so a live show with all the good stuff would work for me.
Thanks for the album suggestions – will definitely check them out.
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Well the bad news is the weekend was tragicomically awful. There must be a higher power, because this one couldn’t have been scripted any better. I’ll share it sometime, but first the good news. Kurt Vile is coming back to town. The last time I saw him, he was a little unhappy because he was opening for Bright Eyes. I’d be miserable too–Bright Eyes has exactly two tricks up his sleeve for his live show (he’ll shout the last phrase of the verse right before the penultimate refrain, and he’ll do a little crazy dance during guitar solos), and his songs are pretty trite, but he gets the boobs flashed at him. KV is a lot more interesting but didn’t get the response he was hoping for. Maybe he’ll have more luck when he’s headlining. Is he/has he come to your neck of the woods recently?
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Sorry to hear there was bad/awful news, sounds no fun at all.
I haven’t seen KV live yet. I keep meaning to, but the last time he was in town was for a one-day festival thing that I’ve been to before that is generally hipster-infested and really badly organised, and so I didn’t fancy spending a heap of money for the opportunity to queue for 45 minutes for a drink, an hour for a piss, while the sound from each stage bled into each other. Still, hopefully he’ll do some of his own shows soon.
And Bright Eyes is awful. I’ve never seen the appeal.
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