…I feel like a woman.
[Video][Website]
[6.14]
Brad Shoup: “And if I’m dipshit drunk on the pink perfume/Then I am the man in the fucking moon.” Case’s narrator is a big ol’ sack, to be sure, but he sure makes with the pretty words. Contrast that scent-memory to Jeremih’s in “5 Senses”: “Girl, you smell so gentle and pure/You control my senses.” There’s no control ceded here, just the language of investment and institutional procedure. Case’s man doesn’t have merits, he has a résumé. The whole thing’s like an incisive short story, one heavy on conversational subtext and light on scene-setting. (The twiddly guitar solo is quite a letdown.)
[7]
Anthony Easton: I love Neko Case. Her voice is amazing — a Pacific Northwest PJ Harvey, with all of the power that implies. She’s capable of keening and whispering with equal power. Her lyrics, smart and feminist, have a narrative skill and a political density that suggests profound thought and pure feeling. The gender queering of this is clever and well constructed. The guitars could come from Sleater-Kinney without much effort. The middle bit has some garage band, mid ’60s charm — a charm that might not be that butch, which complicates the gender bit. I need to write these things, because I know it’s good but I don’t love it and I am not sure what is lacking.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: Each new Neko Case album needs its punchy, narratively-condensed entry point, and “Man” performs the duty with much the same aplomb as “Hold On, Hold On” or “People Gotta Lot Of Nerve.” The rumbling bass and beat are better than the guitars, but how much you like this is going to depend on how powerful or clever you think a line like “You didn’t know what a man was until I showed you” coming out of a woman. I like it, but it wouldn’t work so well without the charging rhythm behind it which turns it into something approaching a battle cry.
[8]
Jer Fairall: Speaking as a man, Neko’s aggression and forthrightness here intimidate me in exactly the way I’m assuming they were supposed to, gnashing and snarling over an atypically muscular guitar accompaniment from professional wuss M. Ward. Speaking as a fan, though, I miss Neko’s usual nuance, if not in her (typically impeccable) vocal, than in the depth that her presence usually guarantees; “Man” has has a provocatively gender-flipped perspective and one helluva punchline in the final verse, but the overall feeling is still one of little more than a lark.
[6]
Daisy Le Merrer: Rock ‘n’ roll has always been a way to affirm masculinity. Bo Didley’s “I’m a Man” was covered by a thousand ’60s British boys who fetishized African American masculinity and felt the era was too emasculating for their taste (you know, that feminist utopia depicted on Mad Men). Among them were The Who, whose early cover meaning was complicated by being featured among many other songs of homo-erotic machismo and troubled gender politics, culminating in “I’m a Boy,” maybe the ultimate case of “protesting too much.” “Man” could be the great lost misogynistic Who song, a track as definitive as a thousand Caruso-deal-with-it.gifs, but it’s 2013 and now we’re all talking about gender, baby. Neko Case can leave the boys behind where the kids are alright.
[8]
Alfred Soto: She’s so there as a singer that like Alison Moyet she can almost overcome generic riffing and compressed drums. Her gender inversions, however, aren’t as interesting as the Raincoats because she’s so there. Turns out she can’t overcome the generic riffing and compressed drums either. More alarming: she’s been getting ideas about keyboard coloring from Elvis Costello.
[5]
Rebecca A. Gowns: I appreciate the rollicking tempo and the little blats of guitar punctuating every “I’m a man!” It’s got all the ingredients for a great song, but something’s missing all the same. I keep listening to the lyrics and trying to scry what exactly Neko Case is saying about the narrator of this song, or even gender relations in general. “I’m a man, that’s what you raised me to be” is conflated with “it’s what kind of animal I am.” Is she being satirical? I honestly can’t tell. The “bullies in the teeth” line and the one about a woman’s love being the watermark seem to be positive attributes, and “I am the man on the fucking moon” sounds hyperbolic, in a bad way. Maybe there’s nothing there after all.
[5]