By Robert Moran

Copyright brisbanetimes

Case has said she took on the memoir as another revenue stream after touring was interrupted during COVID. Since its release in January, the book has been quite successful, earning acclaim and reaching the New York Times’ bestseller list. Has it worked financially?

“Not really,” she says wryly. “Because the publishing industry, you get promised a good amount of money, but they give it to you in such chunks, so far apart, that I’m already in debt. It doesn’t help. It’s really difficult.”

Touring remains the most immediate way to make money as a musician and Case is preparing to return to the road with Neon Grey Midnight Green, her first album since 2018’s Hell-On. She’s called the album, purposely grand and orchestral, a love letter to musicians in an era that increasingly favours digital replication.

“The culture we’re in right now is very much about immediacy, and musicians are being treated very badly. They’re trying to replace us, which is stupid,” she says. “But machines can’t make music the way we do. AI is not gonna make a song that makes you pull your car over and cry. It’s just not gonna happen.”

Weirdly enough, that’s exactly how people have been reacting to viral AI bands such as Velvet Sundown and Let Babylon Burn. “I’m not interested,” says Case of AI’s inroads into music. “It’s all just another sad footnote. Another sad joke in what is our culture at the moment.”

In press notes, Neon Grey Midnight Green is described as Case’s first album that’s been entirely self-produced. It’s a bristly distinction. “Well, I’ve actually produced most of my records,” says Case. “There’s no such thing – unless you make a record from start to finish by yourself – where making an album isn’t collaborative, and I don’t have any problem giving credit where credit is due. But the bulk of the work is always mine. For this record, I just decided I was going to start crediting myself like a white man.”