Apr

13

Neko Case: This Tornado Loves You

Filed Under Updates 

neko-truckSomewhere on internet, Neko Case was asked of her song, “So, is ‘This Tornado Loves You’—is it about how violent and tempestuous love can be?” or something to that effect. Neko’s reply, God bless her, went along these lines: “No, it’s about a tornado being in love with someone.” That is, she meant the song literally.

And that, strangely enough, makes the song far more enjoyable than it might have been otherwise. Freed from having to dig deep into her words to uncover what the song is “really” about, we can simply be bowled over by Neko’s poetry. And what dazzling wordplay: her tornado sings from one side of its mouth that it “carved your name across three counties,” and out of the other side claims that it “waited with a glacier’s patience.” Neko’s abundant gift for the bloody and noirish is as startling as ever, leaving “them motherless, fatherless/their souls dangling inside-out from their mouths;” after carving its Beatrice’s name across the counties, the tornado “ground it in with bloody hides.” So is her sense of humor, a dark amusement at the spectacle of a tornado in the grip of unrequited love,  thrown into a rage at the frustration of its desire and so driven to destroy the entire midwest, railroads and trailer parks and all of it.

Time would fail me to go on about her voice, a force of nature in itself, which infuses this song and its tornado with a pathos and pining that most singers can’t even summon when they’re singing about people.

To get all meta on you now, this song, I believe, proves the goodness of doing something just for the sake of doing it. Without having to “really” sing about something else, Neko freely brought in whatever images were required to convey a lovelorn tornado’s emotions, and so wrote a far more evocative and stirring song that she could have otherwise. Art for art’s sake has run many souls aground, for sure, but art for the message’s sake is just as leaky a shipwreck; I’d say that, in a fundamental sense, we were made to make things that we don’t need because man needs enjoyment more than he needs didacticism. Neko’s song, as literally as it is meant, and as bloody and horrific as its images are, keeps bringing me back, in its funny way, to the goodness of creation.

Neko Case: This Tornado Loves You (from Middle Cyclone; check her out here, here, and here; song lyrics here)

Brendan loves trains. He was upset when the tornado tore up the train near the bridge of this song. But he still also loves the song. He’s torn.

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Comments

6 Responses to “Neko Case: This Tornado Loves You”

  1. Gabriel Stevenson on April 14th, 2009 7:59 am

    This is great. I wish the people who write these things would leave their names at the bottom of the page so I knew who’s responsible!

  2. Josh on April 14th, 2009 8:12 am

    That one’s from our friend Brendan.

  3. Tyler E. on April 14th, 2009 11:58 am

    There’s a pretty insightful video about the album here

    http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Cyclone-Neko-Case/dp/B001MWGZDG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1239735447&sr=8-1

  4. shroneyO on April 14th, 2009 5:09 pm

    and may I say, “I love your long shadows and your gunpowder eyes..” leaves me thankful that I have ears and that english was invented.

  5. Remy on April 14th, 2009 6:44 pm

    I nominate this song to be drawn by Nate next.

  6. Stereopathic Music on June 5th, 2009 8:14 am

    [...] Brendan meditated on Neko Case’s ‘This Tornado Loves You.’ [...]

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