Neko Case: Piano Rescuer

12/16/08 4:50pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Neko Case saved several pianos from the scrapyard while recording her new album, Middle Cyclone.

Case recounts the recording of Middle Cyclone in a video which can be seen below. She began working on the album on a farm, which Case describes as "very creaky. There's a lot of places where windows are missing. It's pretty noisy... I kinda like it."

Case began saving pianos that would have been thrown away and used them on her record.

"I had this barn with nothing in it, so I thought it would be hilarious to collect as many free pianos as I could get, and I liked the fact that these pianos were going to be thrown away and that nobody wanted them, but we could make them into a great piano orchestra," Case says in the video. "It's like The Velveteen Rabbit, you know?"

Case describes some of the pianos as "kinda grumpy," since they're missing pedals and have cracks in them. She plans to take one apart and use its parts to make something else and then stick it in her front yard so a tree can "grow through it or something. That'd be a nice way to end your life as a piano, I think."

The album was made using a cardboard recording booth in a barn where the wind constantly gusted through.

"I was about five songs in when I realized four of the five songs had tornado references, and one of them was 'This Tornado Loves You,' which was what if a tornado fell in love with you?" Case says. "What does a tornado's love look like? It's probably pretty dangerous."

Here's the video, which includes clips of Case's new songs: