(desperation + noise)

But it’s the devil I love
and it’s as funny as real love.

The above quote’s from “Hold On, Hold On,” off of Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which was full of ghosts and people who made bad decisions but just haven’t died yet, though they probably want to; a wildly expanding desert of faith and disappointment when said faith was misplaced; a meditative yawn between tragedies; a masterful observation of the master/slave, deity/worshiper dynamic (referencing Scott Reid’s brilliant examination of the record’s themes, one of the few CokeMachineGlow pieces that doesn’t cause me to grow big with untamed rage); like waking up face-to-face with God and he is cloaked black in an executioner’s hood; a really good record whose encapsulation of space and emptiness and mastery of reverb I return to often.

And then there is that voice, that sweet howl at the darkness, like a broken tiger.

“People Got a Lotta Nerve” employs similar sonic wonder: guitars set on permanent country shimmer, Case floating in like a lost soul determined to stay lost. Its lyrics, if only by the casual reference to “maneater,” are a sharp reverse on Hall & Oates and Nelly Furtado: if those songs serve as the warning, “Nerve” is the indigestion.

In many ways, it is the devil that Case loves to write about: that subtle, hidden desire to make friends and become one with the locusts that have bored their way into the corner-spaces of the mind. She taunts her direct object, employing the animal folklore of “elephants” that “never forget” and “whales” that are “killer.” She marvels at this person’s inability to see reality, or their ability to look past it into some shimmering mirage they call a future with her.

She admires it, really. Too bad.

Too bad in the face of such insane hope we can only default to learned patterns. To reject those who would deign to stand near us. To spit out their bones.