The creatures that crawl, cry, and kill through The Worse Things Get are — before any fates are revealed — alive. Alive through the incantation that is Neko Case’s voice/pen combo, both sharp and seductive. Funnier and nastier than your traditional chanteuse, Case has carved out a long career of murder ballads and love songs that bleed and gnash their teeth and are above all some of the most honest songs you will ever hear. From the death metal-esque bridge of “Wild Creatures,” the country soul of “Night Still Comes,” the stomping gender fuckery of “Man” (“you didn’t know what a man was until I showed you”), the album starts strong and only gets bolder from there. Nothing will prepare you for the devastating acapella “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,” a recount of watching a child get screamed at (“get the fuck away from me/why don’t you ever shut up”) by their mother. The shock is quickly turned into a bittersweet balm, the voices of Case and cohort Kelly Hogan reassuring that the child is not only seen but understood; “I still love you, even if I never see you again.”