Consumer Guide Album

Neko Case: Hell-On [Anti-, 2018]
Lyrically and melodically, Case has never been more accessible or accomplished. Emotionally, however, she's as distant as ever, and no longer inclined to soften that fact with a reassuring scrim of obscurism. Like her, you may well think God is a tire fire and petroleum an offense against the organic life it exploits and destroys. But that won't make the two of you allies--she rides alone. Here she's smartest and most effective memorializing a family friend who abused children without assaulting them sexually or physically, rendering him the proximate cause of "Curse of the I-5 Corridor" and its devastated "So I left home and faked my ID/And fucked every man that I wanted to be." B+