Curse of the I-5 Corridor

Album: Hell-On (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Mark Lanegan duets with Neko Case on this epic number about music, men and the passage of time. With a mixture of brutality and tenderness, Case stares down her wayward sex-mad teenage self.

    "I needed love," she told Q magazine. "I didn't have any and I thought that sleeping with men was getting love. I'd never been in love. I didn't know what that meant. If I could get what I thought was love or the possibility of it, or someone just putting their arms around me - you don't understand why you do those things at the time. You're just a little animal. People die without affection. I just knew that I was a girl, which was really unimportant. I never thought I could be a musician, so I didn't realize that my obsession with music was about me wanting to be one."
  • Joey Burns of Calexico played keyboards on "Curse of the I-5 Corridor." He told Uncut. "I felt like the piano parts on here give a sense of earth. To be sure, she's a full-on environmentalist and naturalist, so I tried to let the piano parts offer some aspect of her character. We all just throw a lot of ideas at her, but you never know what she'll end up using. She's not just thinking about traditional music or traditional means of recording. She's looking to create unusual sounds."

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