We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.

All Neko Case ever wanted was to be useful. One of the great tragedies of her life was watching her father, at retirement age, suddenly made to feel useless. Now 54 — around the age her dad was when he retired — Case insists she is sharper, smarter, and more useful than she has ever been.

Sitting across from her in the Los Angeles offices of Anti, her record label, I see it. She has the zeal of a recently homed pitbull. Case is barefoot, a plaid shirt hanging loosely off her shoulders, a hulking bear ring glinting on her finger. (“I’ve always felt like a werewolf,” she says. “So I asked myself: What animal would a werewolf respect? A bear.”) She looks at it when she feels rage, and it calms her down. Today, however, Case’s eyes are focused entirely on mine; she may have the strongest eye contact in the game. I keep waiting for her to break, or glance to the side, but she keeps her eyes on me like a dog on its food bowl (to follow the metaphor, since this is Neko Case, after all).

When I arrived at the Anti offices, I found Case surrounded by several hundred vinyl copies of her upcoming album, Neon Grey Midnight Green, her name Sharpied across them. She has spent days autographing them, yet her energy is volcanic. She talks less like a singer promoting her first album in seven years than a community organizer, diving headlong into the state of the nation: concentration camps on American soil, the disposability of the elderly, the everyday banality of cruelty. In every way, she is an interviewer’s dream, talking for minutes on end, with effortlessly sharp answers that range from deeply insightful and analytical to borderline life-changing.

“Grief is a gift,” she says, recalling the many musician friends she lost in quick succession over the past few years — Mark Lanegan, the Sadies’ Dallas Good, the Flat Duo Jets’ Dexter Romweber — all of whom left her the gift of memory, clarity, and connection beyond the arbitrary borders of a living body. Her sentences spool into long, sharp riffs, assonant and incantatory, the kind of language that might double as her lyrics. Then, minutes later, she is dismissing Lars von Trier with a flick of her hand: “He can fuck right off.”

This fusion of the political and the personal, the comic and the catastrophic, has always defined Case’s art. Over a nearly three-decade career, she has cultivated one of the most distinctive voices in American song. Her albums unravel like musical picaresques: restlessly digressive, bluntly funny, strange — but never in ways you’d anticipate.

Her latest record, written during what she calls her most alive and connected years, arrives alongside an unexpected turn: a Broadway-bound musical adaptation of Thelma & Louise, for which she has co-written songs. She talks about both projects for so long that her publicist frets she’ll miss her next appointment, the filming of a “What’s In My Bag” segment at Amoeba records. She hugs tightly when we part. And she leaves me with the sense that her greatest gift — her usefulness — lies not only in the songs she writes, but in the way she insists on pushing conversations toward truth, however bracing.

As I walk out of the office, I jot down the phrase that best describes her mood: subversive mirth. A perfectly Neko Case turn of phrase.

Neon Grey Midnight Green (2025)

I’ve been thinking about the ways grief shows up in your work. The grief of your parents seemed to inspire a confessional mode on The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You…, whereas the grief on Neon Grey Midnight Green seems to be expressed more sentimentally. Why is that?

NEKO CASE: I realized I was writing songs about musicians and about music. You know, we live in a time where people are being commodified against their will, and Spotify has made it so musicians can’t make money. Basically, it just feels like we’re being downsized, like we’re being laid off, fired, erased. I wanted to remind everybody how powerful musicians are. There’s no way AI can write a song that makes you pull your car over and cry.

When you say you feel you’re being downsized, what does that look like materially?

CASE: Doing things in a studio is incredibly cost-prohibitive. Nowadays I can hardly travel to Europe with a band. I can’t do anything that I used to do. So now people rely on TikTok videos and stuff, and I get it, because that’s the way they get the word out, but I want people to get excited about figuring out new ways, because that’s where we are right now. And the new ways might be the old ways. They worked really well. You know, I had the privilege of making this record in a studio and maybe got the last advance anybody’s ever gonna get. And so I wanted to make sure all the sounds on the record were made by real people. That’s not to say that I don’t love a synthesizer, but in this case, I really wanted the breathing organic machines that we are to be on the record.

This album makes the case not only for music as an important resource, but for the validity of musicians as laborers. Where do you go from here?

CASE: I myself am feeling stuck, but I’m not deciding that’s my state. I’m like, “Okay, who can I call? Who can I brainstorm with? Who is the person who can invent a new technology that can make us feel good about the way we’re putting our music out there?” That’s the kind of innovation we need. It’s just so important to keep that creative joy and subversive mirth going.

More musicians are taking their music off Spotify. I know that’s not a possibility for everyone, but I’m sure you’ve thought about it, right?

CASE: Well, it is a possibility for me, and I could do it. But I have a 50/50 relationship with my label that I’ve been with for over 20 years. They have asked me not to because it would kneecap them in the way they’re doing things right now. Because our relationship is so great, for now, I’m staying. But I do not want to be there, because I’m not into robbing people or genocide or idiot billionaires.

You lost a lot of your musical friends and collaborators in quick succession in the past few years. Can you tell me about some of them?

CASE: When I first started working on this record, I was in Phoenix, spending time with Jon Rauhouse because he was dealing with cancer treatment. I went there for a month and a half and hung out.

When I drove across the country back home, Donny Gerrard, who is known for being in Mavis Staples’ band, passed. He was a huge part of my life when I was young because he was in a band called Skylark from Vancouver, BC. I got to work with him several times with Mavis, and he was such a sweet person. He’s one of those musicians who is on everything and who we all worship. Elton John loved him. He was such a professional, such a wonderful person. I didn’t know him well, but, man, his death hit me hard. I just thought about poor Mavis, who’d lost her sisters and, you know, her brother, and she’s still out there doing it.

And then right after that I got home and my friend Dallas Good passed away unexpectedly. He was one of my earliest great peers, collaborators, inspirations, partners in crime, and family. He was far too young. He died of heart failure, and it was so unexpected, so jarring.

Then people just kept dying. It was one person after another. People say it’s just the age I am, ‘cause I’m in my 50s, but I don’t think that’s it. People were leaving at the time we needed them most. It can be really dispiriting, but, you know, death is not frightening to me. I’ve been a friend of death. You know how some people are afraid of people with cancer? I’m not afraid of that. I’m not afraid to talk to people who are dealing with hard things or to joke about cancer with somebody who has cancer. People need people, and there’s something about being accepting of grief, because grief will give you these immense gifts. And it’s not the reason that you do it. You do it because you’re a human and you need to go through the processes you go through to learn and to grow. Grief is very misunderstood and avoided as though it’s some sort of torture, but it isn’t that. It sometimes feels that way, but it’s necessary.

Tell me more about the gifts that grief brought you.

CASE: It brings you certain memories or clarity. I often dream of people after they die, and they tell me things. I can’t prove that that’s a real thing that happened, but I will wake up and feel absolutely calm and even joyful, and am able to continue in a way that feels like somebody I love gave a little bit of themselves to me so I could keep going. It is so humbling, heavy, and beautiful, and it’s part of our humanity, and, you know, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Having such a spate of people dying, though, I’ve had to really breathe through it. There were also times where I felt like a bad friend because I couldn’t be there to support everyone all the time.

Tell me about the women you sing about on “Destination,” the album’s opener. They seem important.

CASE: The song’s about women, queer people, and gender non-conforming people that I really latched onto. They weren’t worried about the male gaze, and so their swagger was so much more authentic. They were so much more capable. I realized that’s what I’ve been wanting to feel, but I’m not pulling it off like them. You know, I’m so in awe of this way of being, and I’ve also been so disappointed by not being taken seriously by men. I’ve felt like a man myself; I’ve felt genderfluid.

“Genderfluid,” that’s not an expression I’ve heard you assign yourself until now.

CASE: That is because people much younger than me have made it possible to say. I would have just used the term tomboy or said I was a dude. But then again, I am one, and I feel partly that way, but I just feel more like a soul. I see the conversations and the expansion of language as a massive gift. Genderfluid makes absolute sense to me. I’m not particular about pronouns or anything for myself.

It’s kind of like how people are asking me a lot about this record. They’re saying, “Well, you’ve produced it for the first time.” And it’s like, no, I’ve produced most of my records, but I put myself as the sole producer on this record. The whole thing was my idea and my vision. I had the veto power, I chose all of this, I did all of this. This is completely mine. I did not do it alone, but it’s time to own it because there are very few women or people who are differently gendered who do this. It’s the same with being genderfluid — being more open about that. I’ve always been very feral in trusting my own instinct, but being able to clearly describe to somebody has felt important.

Working On The Set Of Lars Von Trier’s Dancer In The Dark (2000)

Let’s go back to one of your first pre-music jobs. Is it true you worked as a set decorator on Lars Von Trier’s Dancer In The Dark?

CASE: Yes. That was interesting, and I had a good time doing it because Lars Von Trier was not there; apparently, he won’t fly. So yeah, I was working on the scenes that were at the prison with Catherine Deneuve. Björk was not there. It was the middle of the summer in Walla Walla, Washington, and we were trying to make it look like winter. It was brutally hot, but we were out there spraying snow.

How’d you get the gig?

CASE: I had a good friend who was a set design guy, and he was hired to do it, and he hired me as his assistant. I had done set decorating in Canada, on some commercials. It was really fun. But then I was horribly disappointed when I saw the movie. I just thought, “Oh, this is murder porn. This is just the torturing of women.” So, you know, in that regard, Lars Von Trier can fuck right off.

Cub (1992-1997)

Hear, hear. Now onto one of your earliest bands, Cub. You used to throw candy into the crowd at shows, right?

CASE: That was their thing. I was kind of a sub in Cub. I would fill in for their drummer who couldn’t go on tour because she was the manager of a chocolate factory. It was the coolest job of all time. I just wanted to play drums so bad and be on the road and see what rock and roll was.

And then you swiftly became friends with Nardwuar?

CASE: Oh, I love him. Yeah, I’ve known him for such a long time, and he’s such a dear. He’s in a band called the Evaporators, who are brilliant. We all played the same shows, and, you know, New Pornographers members are in the Evaporators. The Vancouver and Canada music scene is very much a potluck. It’s not a competitive situation because the population is so small. If you’re in a band, you’ve got to be cool with the fact that the bass player is probably going to be in three other bands, and then you become friends with the three other bands and you always play shows together. It was such a cooperative, positive environment to make music.

Do you remember what your first major press was? And did it surprise you to see outside of yourself and what other people saw when they looked at you?

CASE: I might have read press, but it wouldn’t stick. I would never think of those things as an accomplishment, or think that it meant that I had some value, especially glossy magazines. They always want you to put on dresses and stuff. I would do it, but I didn’t like it. I was too busy running toward the next thing, like the next tour or record. It was very much a kind of disassociation, and I paid for that later, for sure.

What do you mean by that?

CASE: Around 40 years old, I just went into a massive depression, because I had been running and running and running and running and running, and not knowing that I was running away. I hadn’t been living the examined life of a person who should be leading an examined life. Artists usually lead examined lives. But I wasn’t learning, and I wasn’t remembering some really precious good times. Like, I went to dinner with the Anti folks last night, and they were like, “Oh, remember when we did this?” And I was like, “I do not remember.” Anxiety was just coating the inside of my body, so the memories couldn’t stick.

Debut Solo Album The Virginian (1997)

The Virginian, your first solo album, was beautiful. But I get the sense you didn’t yet realize the capacity of your voice?

CASE: Yeah, I was terrified. I sang on 10 the whole time. It was really funny — when I was done making that record, there was this guy called Tom in a band called Slow — which is like this huge punk rock institution in Canada — and he was very blunt about it. He said, “Neko, it’s a good record, but you have absolutely no dynamic.” And I thought about it, and I was like, “Oh my God, he’s absolutely right. I don’t have any dynamic.” It’s one of the greatest things anyone ever said to me. Even on this record, I was like, “Okay, make sure you don’t just make everything loud and screamy.”

Did singing with the New Pornographers give you a greater sense of dynamic?

CASE: Yeah, it was a harmony masterclass. I am not trained, so all the things I had to learn, I had to learn by ear and by really beating myself over the head with it. I had such a hard time with some things in the New Pornographers because there are notes that I can’t tell the difference between. And once I realised that, I felt a lot better. But, you know, I was killing myself to try to do slight variations because Carl’s melodies are really difficult and they’re really interesting.

Working With Mary Margaret O’Hara On “Ghost Wiring” From Blacklisted (2002)

I will take any opportunity I can get to ask about Mary Margaret O’Hara, who is my favorite singer of all time. You got her on Blacklisted.

CASE: I did. And unfortunately, I was not able to use as much as I wanted to because she is so different and so Mary Margaret O’Hara. If it works with you, it works with you. But then if it doesn’t, it’s like, I didn’t want to do something with her voice just so I could go, “Mary Margaret O’Hara’s on my record.” I should go back through those tracks again and try to bring that out, because there is more on there. I just didn’t use all of it. I think I wasn’t quite brave enough.

What did you cut?

CASE: Just more improvised sounds. I think I was worried about the lyrical content not being evident if we did that. It was about narrative importance.

There’s a question on “Blacklisted” that I imagine you’re now well equipped to answer: “What’s at the heart of your engine’s rage?”

CASE: I think I’ve always been equipped to answer that. I think not being respected for the beginnings of my gender identity, or not being seen as a soul that could possibly be intelligent or useful. Being useful is a very big thing for me. I don’t like to feel like I’m not of use.

Living With Farm Animals (Present)

You have a lot of animals at home to take care of. Does that feed into your desire to feel useful?

CASE: I think animals just treat you very differently. They treat you how you want to be treated, as long as you respect that they are also communicating in their own very valid way. I think I projected onto my animals a lot as a kid, because that’s what you do. But then when I started being around horses, I understood that that was not going to work, and that it was time to respect them from their point of view. When I unlocked that and gave into it, I was able to practice setting down anxiety for the first time. That’s how the horses were able to respond to me. My horse, Norman, wouldn’t respond to me unless I put my anxiety down. Then I could practice with him, and I could put it down for longer and longer and longer. I think that’s why horses are so sought after to help rehabilitate people with PTSD. Horses don’t lie.

Tell me about your experience with cows.

CASE: I spent a lot of time around cows because my grandfather raised organic beef when I was a kid, pasture-raised, grass-fed. My grandfather was so soft and gentle; he was too attached to his cows to eat them, so he would just buy shitty beef from the store. I remember I would go out in the backyard at my grandma’s house, which kind of butted up against the field fence, and I would put the lawn chair out and hang my laundry on the fence, and suddenly, an entire herd of 40 cows was right behind me. One of them would come lick my face and startle the shit out of me. Like, “Where the fuck did you guys come from?”

Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (2006)

Since this is a music publication and not Horses & Hounds, I should probably steer us back to music. Fox Confessor Brings The Flood potentially had some of the most violent imagery in the recent American canon. Where did your vast imagination for violence come from?

CASE: I think it’s just nature. There’s violence we tolerate, and then there’s violence we abhor and punish. Maybe it was just an attempt to make sense of some of those kinds of violence, because my life has been very violent, including my inner rage. It’s a very violent rage. It tears me up sometimes — not like it used to. It feels more like a tool now than a malady or something that I could not separate myself from. But what I knew about my rage was I could not give it away, I could not kill it, and I didn’t want to, because my rage has saved my life many times. I guess I just wanted to get to know my rage, because it needed something from me, since it protected me for so long.

I always think of the Minotaur in the mythology. I forget who goes into the labyrinth and kills him, but it’s like, this poor fucking Minotaur, he’s half a Zeus and half calf, and he’s just wandering around in this dark fucking labyrinth. I’d be pissed off, too. I just want to put my arms around the Minotaur so badly, just take his hoofy hand and lead him over to the edge of the labyrinth. I don’t know what — I mean, maybe he’ll eat me, but I just… I can’t think of anything lonelier. And maybe that’s why it is such a great metaphor, because that kind of rage is absolute loneliness.

One of the first things you said today was that you’d easily befriended death. When did you befriend rage?

CASE: Well, I’ve had a lot of therapy. And of course, right when I started befriending my rage, I got into perimenopause, which was just like — you know all those things you think you’re good at? “See you fucking later,” because now you’re going to go into adolescence again. Do you remember that part of adolescence, like around 13, where you’re basically a liquid in a cocoon? And you’re like, “Who the fuck am I?” That fucking terrifying thing? Well, it’s the same again. And at the same time, my daughter was also 13, going into that fucking cocoon, and I’m just like, “I know for sure you’re going to come out the other side. So I’m going to try to believe that myself.” It is so incredibly difficult, and I’m so fucking angry that we know nothing about women’s health and, more specifically, that people don’t believe that we are in pain or are suffering or any number of things.

But the rage in there was something I’d never experienced before. It was wild. I’m out the other side now, which is great, but it’s so weird because it’s not what I thought it would be at all. And it’s not what other people told me it would be either. It was like there was this horrible brain fog. I couldn’t think of words, and I just felt like, “Do I have Alzheimer’s?” People kept saying, “It’s going to get better. It’s going to get better. It’s going to get better.” I was like, “Okay, I’m going to trust you.” So, I came out the other side and the brain fog did go away, but sometimes I find that I can’t think of the word for “fork” while I’m holding one, but my generative mind and my creative mind are sharper than they have ever been. So I’m like, “Okay, all these things we think about age in our society are so wrong.”

Grammy Nominations & General Industry Adulation For Middle Cyclone (2009)

Middle Cyclone was commercially successful and also picked up a couple Grammy nominations. How did it feel to square your blue-collar ideals of music and then to see yourself on a Billboard chart or any of these other signifiers of success?

CASE: Well, that was more a victory for the label. And I was happy because that was really good for them. Here we are at Anti, who I have a really good relationship with. They’ve done everything they’ve ever said they would do. They’re very, very respectful of what I want to happen with my image or my music or what have you. And they’re good friends. But I also knew that you don’t get nominated for a Grammy unless you put in an application and pay. So it’s a real thing, but it’s not a real thing. I felt good to be nominated, and it also felt good to lose and know that it didn’t hurt.

Who did you lose to?

CASE: I lost to Steve Earle, and then for art packaging, I lost to Brian Eno and David Byrne. I was like, you know what? I can live with that. It was pretty cool to even be considered next to those people. It felt good to leave the Grammys understanding a little better that it was not this fun party or personal validation experiment; it was very much an industry thing. But I have felt really angry about other records that other people have made not being nominated for a Grammy.

Like what?

CASE: Angel Olsen’s Big Time. I was so livid that record wasn’t nominated for a Grammy because it was so fucking good. I was like, I’m gonna make her a fucking Grammy. I’m gonna fucking send it to her.

Why do you think Middle Cyclone was your most industry approved album?

CASE: It probably had to do with being in my thirties, and not being too old, not being too young; being edgy enough, but not too edgy. There’s no formula that you can really pin down to figure that stuff out, but I’m very glad that that record was loved the way it was. I still have a career because of that record.

Her Brilliant Tweets

Sometimes twitter is like going to a funeral for a toilet where all the toilets in mourning hated the toilet and each other.

— Neko Case (@NekoCase) December 12, 2019

You were an all-time tweeter. When did you stop finding Twitter fun?

CASE: It just got so fucking mean. I mean, it was a nice way to meet people, instead of having to shout at them after concerts. On Twitter, I could just talk to them about chickens and stuff, and I met some of my very best friends on Twitter. I think I also grew a much thicker skin and kind of understood the difference between being young and angry and older and angry and going, “Okay, that younger person, their laser is not focused yet. So they’re going to be blowing their laser on a bunch of other people until they get it right.” Seeing that dynamic was really interesting.

And then, you know, there were people that were just fucking mean, and it was not hard to be able to go, “Yeah, that has nothing to do with me.” But then at a certain point, you get saturated with that kind of negativity and you’re like, “You know what? I have other shit to do.” And then there were just too many Nazis, and I was like, “Fuck this shit.” It’s just so mean. It’s not what it used to be. Instagram, same thing. It went the same way. Now I’m on Substack, and Substack has a thing called Notes. I post on it sometimes, but I think that medium kind of ran its course for me because the discovery and the wonder of it have gone. I miss people just being funny.

Who made you laugh most on Twitter?

CASE: I remember there was this one account where this guy pretended to be Michael Caine. He would make up these sentences, and you would hear them in a Michael Caine voice, and they would make me pee my pants. It made me laugh so fucking hard. Stuff like that is what I miss. But, you know, how long can things last and be good? I want to go into an era where we can find a way to make things last and be good.

What about you? Do you think you’re making a good thing last?

CASE: I mean, I can sing. I’ve way more control than I’ve ever had. I have more physical stamina. I have more range than I’ve ever had, and I enjoy it way more than I ever have. I think the idea of being too old to play music is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The brain is sharper than ever post-menopause. Men go through it too; it’s called andropause, but they’re never going to fucking talk about it. So look it up, men. But anyway, our brains are sharper and we’re ready to solve some fucking problems.

I keep hearing about how the trade schools are filling up with older women too. And I’m like, “Okay, this is great. I want to be part of that wave,” because my own father killed himself when he was about my age, and the reason he did it is because he felt useless. Because his job got rid of him. He was overqualified for it, you know? There were other reasons, other very trauma-based reasons. But if somebody would have made him feel useful, I think he would have kept going. And I don’t want anybody to ever feel useless like that. And I think a lot about the way we treat older people, especially seniors, and it’s like, “Why? Why do we not interact? Why do we keep age groups separate from each other? Why don’t we go outside?” Living in a rural place has been really great for that because you get to become friends with people out of your age group and it’s super healthy.

The Upcoming Thelma & Louise Musical

Can you talk about the Thelma & Louise musical yet?

CASE: Well, I’ve been working on it for almost 10 years. We just did three workshop shows in London, and it went really well. It was the first time we ever got to see it on a stage with staging, lighting, and dancers. It was heavy. I feel it’s a very different way to work. It’s heavily collaborative, but the collaboration makes it a very sleek hovercraft in this weird way. We change things around all the time, and you can never be married to one thing. Like, man, I always understood and respected and even implemented the theory of killing your darlings, but this is a whole other level.

How does this stage version differ from the film?

CASE: One of the things we really wanted to do in the show was make the men less cartoonish. The men were kind of caricatures of aspects of men; they weren’t full men. So we are working hard to make sure that the men in the story are not caricatures and that they’re real people, and that they understand their part in what’s happening and they realize how much they have to lose and how we all lose with patriarchy. And the women take credit for their part in the stupid dance of the relationships of men and women and, you know, playing hard to get, not telling somebody you’re mad, or just those weird avoidance dances and how much time we waste not saying how we feel.

What’s your background with musicals?

CASE: When Callie [Khouri, who wrote the original screenplay] called me to do this, I was like, “Callie, I don’t know anything about fucking musicals. I can’t even read music.” And she was like, “Nope, that’s the reason I want you to do it.” And I was like, “Okay, but I’ll probably need lots of help.” So all these years later, I haven’t had to bend myself too hard. But if I get fired tomorrow — which I could, you know, and I’ve always known that since the beginning; this may also never happen, it could never make it to Broadway — it’s been a masterclass in songwriting and storytelling.

The only thing about it that makes me really sad is what you’re not told: It’s not an accessible art form. You cannot do this job unless you are independently wealthy, which I am not. It has been a massive strain on my finances because it’s years and years and years and years of not being paid, and having to spend up to a month at a time working on something, which doesn’t hurt because you care so much about it.

But I can’t stop thinking, “How are people who aren’t independently wealthy going to get to tell those stories,” you know? I guess there are scholarships and things like that, but why do we just want the same story over and over and over again? I want to know everybody’s story, from every perspective. I don’t want to just see one version of everything all the time. I want human beings to all have an equal chance. First of all, to just live, and then secondly, to tell their fucking stories, because stories heal everything. Stories are how humans communicate and how we remember things.

Neon Grey Midnight Green is out 9/26 via Anti.