Neko Case - "This Tornado Loves You"

So the good news - are you sitting down? - is that the Bad Thing isn't happening to me anymore. I'm just sitting here on the ground in the parking lot, by myself, wearing shorts. There's nobody around for a while. It's quiet except for this truck with the radio on and the window half-down - there's the wash of that plus the perfect fifth of one light's dying hum against some other light close by. But not too close. The concrete's pressing into the backs of my thighs; when I get up it'll look like I have a weird rash, but there's nobody here to see it, so. I'm okay. Every once in a while the radio floats in a steady report from somewhere else entirely, but I don't have to strain to hear it. But okay, here's the thing, are you ready? The bad news is yours. All of it. The Bad Thing is coming to you and I'm sorry. It needs somewhere to go and I guess right now it's busy describing its radius all the fuck over wherever it is you call home. Are you at work? At your desk? Look out the window - or, actually, don't look out the window, I'm sorry, I'm sorry you had to see that, or not if things still look the same which they might but you still need to know that it's coming. For you. Right now. It has already swallowed the home where you grew up and it is chewing your current hardwood like an unchallenging dessert, crushing your friends into a fine grain and assuming them into its badness and soon all that's left of the things you love most will be glass, a few bones, some stray metal. There won't really be air, just the Bad Thing singing doppler in its sweetest voice over the ground to nobody, you won't even be there to learn what that actually sounds like - but if it makes you feel better neither will I, because I'm here. Safe, alone, untouched in the parking lot. A palindrome needs something to fold out around. Any echo needs still in its centre. I'm sorry you had to find out this way, but at least now you're ready. What matters in the end is that the Bad Thing is still happening, somewhere out there, but not to me. Not anymore.

Neko Case's new album is streaming over at NPR, and it is razor-sharp, cut-glass, light-your-nerves-on-fire hard and sharp and beautiful. You should go listen to it, if beautiful's your kind of thing.

[Buy Middle Cyclone]