The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You

Neko Case - The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You
Critic Score
Based on 29 reviews
2013 Ratings: #87 / 1115
Year End Rank: #27
User Score
Based on 122 ratings
2013 Rank: #168
Liked by 8 people
September 3, 2013 / Release Date
LP / Format
Anti- / Label
Sign In to rate and review

CRITIC REVIEWS

90
Tiny Mix Tapes

The Worse Things Get is a no-brainer Album of the Year.

90
musicOMH

On The Worse Things Get, there’s not a weak song.

90
AllMusic

It's some of her most instantly gratifying work as well, perfectly encapsulating all of her personas, from the erudite, whiskey-shooting provocateur to the sweet and soulful, small town crooner who sounds like she was plucked from the pages of a novel set in the antebellum north.

90
No Ripcord

On this, her latest and most emotionally charged album, she's managed to create a painful outpouring of honesty, one that strikes that coveted balance of both melodic and lyrical expression; her message is equally powerful from each direction.

90
Uncut

On The Worse Things Get…, Case asserts herself less in a literal sense, but paints the most emboldening and endearing portrait of herself yet

85
Spectrum Culture

The Worse Things Get may not be a definitive album for Case like the country noir of Blacklisted or an artistic breakthrough like Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. It’s not even a comeback album, as Middle Cyclone was a success in any reasonable sense of the term. But it’s Case at her tightest as a songwriter and a singer, without any weaknesses or leaden tracks on the whole album.

82
Pitchfork

Somehow, The Worse Things Get is Case’s tightest record and also her strangest. With its off-kilter arrangements and eccentric turns of phrase, it’s a world unto itself.

82
Sputnikmusic

The Worse Things Get is a listen that tears and breaks, an album defiant and loud as often as it is anxious and sad.

80
Q Magazine
Her latest album is a little more conventional but no less arresting.
80
The Arts Desk
Case has mostly abandoned the elegant mythologies that have previously so typified her songwriting.
80
The Observer
The closing Ragtime offers a happy ending of sorts, but this is too honest a record about unhappiness and grief to deliver a neat, redemptive conclusion.
80
NOW Magazine
Vitality courses through every song on her sixth album.
80
Mojo

A new depth to her prickly but previously sometimes brattish lyrics, a grown up album by a real grown up who knows how to sugar-coat a pill for mass consumption.

80
The Guardian
Sometimes her directness is harrowing: Where Did I Leave That Fire? opens with sonar bleeps and a cold ripple of piano, and finds Case all but dissociated from herself: "I wanted so badly not to be me." If this makes the album sound self-indulgent, rest assured it is far from it.
80
Alternative Press
Exposing her honest and disarmed self more than ever, Neko proceeds to open old wounds.
80
Slant Magazine
It's a tribute to Case's ever-growing strength as a songwriter that she refuses to take the sharp edges off the vicissitudes her songs depict while still acknowledging the humor and occasional beauty of those edges.
80
Rolling Stone
Her perfectly turned sixth LP deals with identity and autonomy; it's got feminist musculature and the dirt of a working musician under its fingernails.
80
The Line of Best Fit

For Case, this is likely a cathartic effort; it’s improbable this path will be revisited, unless more tragedy befalls her, but it’s a tremendous listen and a wonderful demonstration of her talents nonetheless.

80
Under the Radar

While Harder doesn't suggest giving up this fight to be heard, it encourages the listener to think about the fight in a different way—by accepting shortcomings, recognizing the narrowness of socially-constructed paths, and starting to rise above it all. 

80
Paste

It’s a record that often elevates the listener through its integrity and intensity, and sometimes grates through its failure to find the right music to express its complex lyrical sentiments.

80
SPIN

Her voice is a bear hug in the literal sense; succumbing to it is like being carjacked by Patsy Cline.

80
NME

Proving herself to still be one of the most authoritative voices in the alt.country firmament, Neko Case’s sixth album is typically sumptuous and lusciously heart-rending. 

80
PopMatters

One advantage of Case being “peaceful and strange” and generally unique is that she can release an album like this and most listeners won’t bat an eye. Only about half of The Worse Things Get really sounds like anything she’s done before under her own name.

75
Pretty Much Amazing

Wwhile the subsequent inconsistency may hold The Worse Things Get back from greatness, it does make it honest, and when it comes to art I’ll take honesty over consistency any day. 

70
Exclaim!
These experiments help keep the record sounding fresh, but the best moments come when Case stays within her wheelhouse and swings away.
70
Consequence of Sound

It’s wholly solipsistic. By nature, the listener is alienated, as we tend to care most about the songs we can relate to. But The Worse Things Get isn’t about us or even for us. These 40 minutes belong to Neko Case. It’s her cleansing.

50
A.V. Club

She’s settled into the safety of contemporary indie-folk, giving The Worse Things Get… the same kind of innocuous sound as radio-friendly groups like The Civil Wars and Of Monsters And Men.

WildChameleon
90

10 years ago, when I seriously entered in the world of deeper music, I listened plenty of artists and one of them is Neko Case. I may be a little biased by my musical roots but the worse thing is more than just a biasis.

Neko Case has a pretty long longevity since she debuted more than 20 years ago. With each of releases, she pushes more and more her songwriting and her sound. But it's with this album that I think she fully opens herself up with her songwriting and her sonority.

This album ... read more

hellodecatur
93

This was my personal AOTY for 2013, which may have been partly influenced by it being my first true exposure to Neko Case, and THAT voice. There's this timbre to Case's singing that's so commanding but sweet. The way she attacks the notes is striking, and some songs here wouldn't have left much of an impression in the hands of a less-capable singer.

But holy hell this thing is hook-y, even as many songs forego traditional verse-chorus structures. "I'm From Nowhere" cycles through ... read more

HerbBride
90

this album feels a bit punchier than her previous work with more edge to it, while managing to preserve the kind of profundity and beauty neko so often captures. some of my favourite lines of hers are on this album

maxbalentine27
88

is it cuz i’m a girllllll if i puked up some sonnets would you call me a miracle???!

HerbBride
90

this album feels a bit punchier than her previous work with more edge to it, while managing to preserve the kind of profundity and beauty neko so often captures. some of my favourite lines of hers are on this album

sorrowfulsoil
83

a beautifully painful and majestic work

Purchasing The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?


Added on: June 11, 2013