Grade: B+ | Genre: Alt-Country Summary: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood marks Neko Case's most accomplished album recorded to date. It's fat in its maturity and drunk with its love for the music. How many people can say they've been permanently blackballed from playing the Grand Ole Opry for being obscene? The historic venue that launched such country legends as Hank Williams and Patsy Cline slapped that distinction on one Neko Case back in 2001 when she finished her set topless. The fiery haired beauty says she wasn't trying to court controversy with her breast-baring move. A girl gets hot up there under the spotlights. Since the headlining event, Case has gone on to cement a solid solo career, singing her own unique blend of country, blues and gospel heisted from a time long past. She's also doubling up vocal responsibilities as the lead female vocalist of the super group the New Pornographers, an entity starting to make some major waves of its own. Soon Neko will probably get jammed in a crossroads where she's forced to choose between the quirky loops of the Pornographers or devoting herself completely to her burgeoning solo work. Until then we'll chug both of them down our ears and try not to loiter our thoughts too long on pondering such a day.

Case's latest effort Fox Confessor Brings the Flood is her fourth official solo outing. She tones down that thick country twang that resonated on past efforts to instead let her sound slowly simmer in the alt-country cauldron. It's a more lush sound to wade through with soft touches. Take an afterthought track like "A Widow's Toast." It finds Case harmonizing with herself in largely acapello fashion, dusted with the occasional guitar strum, at a brief minute and a half. Boring you say? Hardly. Its sparseness brings a razor sharp focus on Case's hefty vocal talents, and how she requires so little to conjure up the magic to unleash these songs.

"Star Witness" sounds like its on loan from Martha Wainwright's collection. Case just belts out her peppery voice through the willowy arrangements that billow around her. It's a strange mixture of kitsch and lazy Southern charm that melds incredibly well with one another. All these nostalgic snapshots make you think that Case got a raw deal on the century she was born into. She should be lending her gorgeous pipes as an opener for Johnny Cash shortly after he brushed up against fame. Perhaps she's actually Loretta Lynn's lost younger sister, separated by some tragic hospital cluster f$%k.

The closing thought, "The Needle Has Landed," is like a rouge criminal ducking out of town under the cover of night. You can see the whirl of yellow flickering past in the headlights as the cool air of evening dances through your hair. It's a busy introspective glance, laid over the hood of a love lost that forms one of the best odes to highway misadventures recorded to date, not to mention a perfect dessert to wrap up this tight work.

Fox Confessor Brings the Flood marks Neko Case's most accomplished album recorded to date. It's fat in its maturity and drunk with its love for the music. She doesn't light every track afire, but when she taps into a track's sweet spot, she doesn't let it out of her grasp until she's bled it for every juicy note its worth. In a day and time when other artists, like Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis, are trying to pin themselves to the sound of Neko's past, the real deal is too busy growing and reinventing herself to worry about successes stale from yesterday. She is a true artist who may not know where this musical current will take her, but we can be assured it will be chuck full of lovely music.

Release Date: March 7, 2006