Going her own way

Neko Case steps out, cutting the sky and singing the stars, spinning fury and mercy as she goes. She loves the world and wears her heart on her sleeve, but she might eat it before you get to thinking it belongs to you.

Wild Creatures pulls together some high points of feral joy from twenty-one years of solo work by Neko Case. The Virginian marked Neko’s debut as a solo artist in 1997. She delved into darkness in 2000 with Furnace Room Lullaby, scrawled Blacklisted in 2004 and recorded The Tigers Have Spoken live the same year. In 2006, she dreamed Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, and in 2009 unleashed Middle Cyclone. She plumbed her own life in 2013 for The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, and raised hell in 2018 with Hell-On. Now in her third decade of recording under her own name, she’s just getting started.

We jumped on a call with Neko ahead of her Friday, September 16 performance in Anchorage to talk about her newest work and what it’s like to cut your own path as a female musician.

Press: Your newest album, “Wild Creatures,” is not only a retrospective of your career but also a major multimedia project. What was it like working on a project of that scope?

Neko: Well, I was fortunate enough to know [artist] Laura Plansker who is the person who did the artwork – she had done the video for ‘Last Lion of Albion’ from my last record, so I had already been inspired by her work. She just has this really great aesthetic that is very off, but really beautiful and really inviting at the same time really odd and disturbing.

Press: Do you feel like Plansker’s visual art has a direct correlation to who you are as a songwriter?

Neko: I think so. To me, both of our work acknowledge that the world is equally full of beautiful and disturbing things.

Press: Another component of Wild Creatures are all of the artist acknowledgments – and there are some pretty big names that shared their feelings about your music. What did that feel like?

Neko: I didn’t know that they were doing that, so it was a huge surprise. My manager just sent me a link one day I couldn’t even get through reading all of them because it was so overwhelming. It’s hard to think of yourself the way others see you. I still have a lot of thank you cards I need to send.

Press: One of the super cool parts about your music is that it defies being forced into a single genre. How have you been able to avoid being pigeonholed into a neat little category?

Neko: I think it’s just how I naturally am as a songwriter. I am more of a linear songwriter and I want to tell little stories or make little movies every time I write. So, my songs are kind of like little soundscapes in a way and I think that might have something to do with it. Of course, there’s a lot of things that don’t, and maybe shouldn’t go together, but rules are meant to be broken.

Press: You’ve definitely navigated the music industry on your own terms but I am curious, as someone who has been active for so long, what has been the biggest change you’ve seen the industry make?

Neko: ... There are more women and female-identifying performers in it now than there were – I would give zero credit to the industry for that, and more to [the artists’] perseverance. The more women and female-identifying artists and musicians there are, the less barriers there are. It’s been nice to see the next generation take having opportunities for granted because it means that they are able to. There’s a real freedom in being able to just take things for granted and get lost in the moment to make some interesting, rather than constantly thinking about how I’m not supposed to be able to do that.

Press: Any advice for up-and-coming female artists?

Neko: Listen to the voice inside your head that tells you what you want. Practice and don’t worry about what the crowd wants because the crowds will find you. We need more interesting music and less formulaic things. There are a lot of women right now who are really angry that they can’t be played on Country Music Radio .... Why are we trying to win their approval? Why are we trying to get them to play more of us like they’re not a dinosaur ...

Press: That very well may have been the pep talk I needed to hear. Thank you!

Neko: Well, the band I have a lot of time to think about these things on the road. (laughs)

Catch Neko Case live in Anchorage on Friday, Septemebr 16 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $48.50 and are available at Centertix.com.