Neko Case has never been one for love songs. Straightforward examples of the form are pretty rare in the repertoire the now 55-year-old artist has built up across nearly three decades as a singer-songwriter. (They’re a bit more common for the Vancouver-born indie “supergroup” the New Pornographers, of which she’s been a member nearly as long.)

She goes directly at the subject on her eighth solo album, Neon Grey Midnight Green. It’s titled after some characteristic atmospheric hues in the Pacific Northwest, where Case mostly grew up, often left to her own devices by parents too young and damaged to care for or even really love her, as chronicled in her harrowing bestselling memoir published earlier this year . On the ninth track here, “Rusty Mountain,” she sings, “Love songs mostly

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