CASEY NEILL AND THE NORWAY RATS "Jumping Out Of My Skin (featuring Corin Tucker, Jenny Conlee)" (Fluff and Gravy)
Add Date: 5/23/2023
Release Date: 5/16/2023
FCC: Clean
Formats: NACC Top 200, Submodern, Non-Comm AAA
RIYL: Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists, REM, Minus 5
The music of Casey Neill & The Norway Rats combines high energy rock rave-ups and haunting lush acoustic reveries built around melodic narrative songwriting. The Norway Rats are a collective of Portland indie all star players whose credits include The Decemberists, Eels, Viva Voce and more. Neill has been touring with the band and solo throughout the USA, Japan, and Europe for more than a decade, performing his songs at venues such as Town Hall in New York, San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, and the Newport Folk Festival. The new Norway Rats record is a major leap forward for the band that No Depression calls "a milestone in Neill and company’s trajectory thus far" while Rolling Stone says " (Neill's) songs mask their complexities beneath a simple, singalong-worthy surface... these swimming waters have serious depth."
"During lockdown I was trying to break the isolation and my strategy here was to drink way too much caffeine. Jittery and wired, I picked up a baritone guitar and wrote ‘Jumping Out of My Skin’ about… being jittery and wired. We tracked it live with very few overdubs. That’s Jenny Conlee bashing out dissonant chords on an upright piano to add to the mania. I asked Corin Tucker if she’d sing on it and she generously agreed. Three fantastic vocal takes from one of the greatest vocalists in modern rock arrived in my inbox and blew the doors off the song. Slang guitarist Anita Lee Elliott who had been touring with us a lot in 2019 added some wonderfully Harrison-esque slide guitar as the final touch.”