(Country, Folk, Indie, Alternative) Neko Case - The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You - 2013, MP3, 320 kbps

On her last album, Middle Cyclone, Neko Case sung about creatures snuffling, frogs and tornadoes, the beauty of ancient nature and our inner animals. Her Attenborough-inspired artistry won her two Grammy nominations in 2009 as well as thrusting her into the glare of the mainstream. So will the singer's sixth album continue the wave of acclaim, given that it's largely about loneliness and death? The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You charts the internal minefield of childhood, love, and loss by way of power pop, classic rock, folk and Motown. The album emerges from a three-year period Case describes as full of "grief and mourning," in the wake of the deaths of many close to her.
"I fought hard against the feeling of grief all my life," she says, "but about three years ago I finally had to give in and mourn the dead. I had to look inward more than I wanted. It was sobering, and I often felt like I was blurring the lines of mental illness. When I stopped fighting it," she adds, "it took me where I needed to go."