Neko Case is offering a free download of the first single, “People Got a Lotta Nerve,” from her new album (Middle Cyclone, due out March 3), and her record label is donating $5 to Best Friends Animal Society for every blog that re-posts it. So, I am doing so: you can download the song here. Here’s the explanation of the deal. I love Neko Case, can’t get enough of her spooky, haunting voice.
The song features an elephant in a zoo, an Orca in a tank, and maybe a man-eating tiger? It’s about carnivorous animals and the way human beings try to control them and contain their instinctive violence. “I’m a man-eater, but still you’re surprised when I eat you…. It will end again in bullets fired.” Makes me think of Rilke’s “The Panther” and John Berger’s “Why Look at Animals.” Also of the tiger that an archaeologist friend of ours had in her lab for her students to dissect; it had escaped from its owner at a highway rest stop in Illinois, and was shot to death by state troopers (and then made its way to the lab).
I like the song a lot, but hope Neko can live with the inevitable Hall & Oates references.
Ivan Kreilkamp 
We just noticed that Neko Case is playing in our town in April. And A.C. Newman is playing in March. What if I had to choose one or the other to see? Probably Neko Case if I’d never seen her before.
I saw her once, it was excellent…