Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
The victims, at least 49 in all, were mainly sex workers and runaways living on the margins.
And, specifically, a figment of Neko Cases imagination.
His young prey, she writes, were like dry sticks being fed into a savage furnace forever.
Its not the first time she has written about her hometown killer.
Its a typically cryptic song from Case.
In her book, shes making the connection clear.
Being poor and small she knows that taste.
Her songs involve dark folktales, animal encounters, and bad uncles.
The characters she sings about, autobiographical or not, have a past theyre trying to shake off.
lang and Laura Veirs.
Then, in 2021, after COVID-19 shutdowns made touring impossible, she started a Substack calledEntering the Lung.
I 100% needed the money, she toldThe Guardiansoon after.
It definitely saved my ass.
It got me through a period where I thought I might lose my house.
As she predicted early on, it eventually led to a memoir thats equally candid.
This is more a survival story; a life in music is the solution, not the plot.
The rash of murders that spooked Neko as a child is one gothic detail of many.
Waiting for her mother to come home feels like being captive in an hourglass.
In her dads house, a dilapidated yellow-brown smear, things are even worse.
The curtainless window in his bedroom is like a frame for clown-faced killers.
Food is hard to come by.
A baby rabbits whiskers buzzed like a Norelco shaver.
Her mother is a deer, always just out of reach.
Ever since she was a kid with a clock radio, Case was crazy about music.
In Tacoma, Case gets a car, a boyfriend, and a first band, the Del Logs.
Rage, so important for some early sense of self, proves to be hard to contain.
I was willing to fight anyone, she writes.
Its all part of the long aftermath of her childhood.
Her relationship with her father softens as they age.
