For years, alt-country siren Neko Case has been able to shiver our timbers with her otherworldly voice. Now, she's found a way to do it with her songwriting.

As the title of her fourth studio album implies, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood is not some set of tear-stained honky-tonk ballads. Instead, it's a dark and disturbingly surreal disc on which the crimson-tressed chanteuse takes her music into another world, blurring the line between dream, myth and reality.

Haunted by ghosts, populated by animals and steeped in imagery, songs like Star Witness, Margaret vs. Pauline and Dirty Knife weave a surreal web of death, bloodshed, dismemberment, stabbings and car crashes.

Meanwhile, the woozy gothic Americana and dry desert twang of her ragtag band -- which includes old cronies from Sadies and Calexico, along with the spidery keyboards of The Band's mad scientist Garth Hudson -- fashion a reverb-soaked backdrop for Case's Lynchian fables.

It isn't all bleak backwoods fare -- Hold On Hold On flashes back to the jangly pop psychedelia of Jefferson Airplane, while That Teenage Feeling channels the sound of '60s girl groups.

But make no mistake; while Neko remains capable of lifting you to heaven or luring you to hell with her rich pipes, Fox Confessor makes it clear she's far more interested in the latter these days.

Track Listing:

1. Margaret Vs. Pauline
2. Star Witness
3. Hold On, Hold On
4. A Widow's Toast
5. That Teenage Feeling
6. Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
7. John Saw That Number
8. Dirty Knife
9. Lion's Jaws
10. Maybe Sparrow
11. At Last