TORONTO - Neko Case has a big, beautiful, clear-sounding voice reminiscent of Patsy Cline with a hint of K.D. Lang combined with red-headed siren good looks and a feisty, independent spirit.

Her powerful voice is shown off to great effect on her third solo album of original work, Middle Cyclone, which made an impressive debut at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart and saw the flaming-haired 37-year-old wandering Virginian play some high profile gigs, most recently David Letterman this past week.

The album art also takes advantage of her strong image and personality as she's pictured balancing on top of the hood of a muscle car in a dress, barefoot, and wielding a sword.

Naturally, anticipation was high then for the honorary Canadian, who has lived in both Vancouver and Toronto, making records respectively with The New Pornographers and The Sadies (among others) although she most recently bought a farm in Vermont, as she pulled into Trinity-St. Paul's Centre on Friday night for the first of two back-to-back sold-out solo shows.

Case singing in a church with wood beams and stained-glass windows in front of an audience of only 700 people? Just how good was this going to be?

No doubt she is a powerhouse singer in an intimate setting, but I have a few small complaints.

The endless silly onstage banter between Case and her backup singer/best friend Kelly Hogan started to get irritating as did Case's own fidgety demeanor as she repeatedly pulled up her pants, touched her nose - joking people think she's "a coke addict," but it's actually because she often brushes the microphone with her face when she's singing - and stared backwards a lot at her musicians on the tiny stage.

They were distractions from what was ultimately good about the 90-minute show - Case's no-holds-barred belting with lovely harmonies provided by Hogan, some nuanced playing by her band, with special mention to guitarist Paul Rigby and multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhouse on pedal steel and banjo, and all of her wonderfully dramatic alt-country songs.

Standouts proved to be older tunes Maybe Sparrow, Hold On, Hold On, Deep Red Bells, Knock Loud, and new songs People Got A Lotta Nerve, Middle Cyclone's title track, I'm An Animal, This Tornado Loves You, Vengeance Is Sleeping and Polar Nettles.

Case also did justice to her Middle Cyclone covers of Harry Nilsson's Don't Forget Me and the great Sparks classic, Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth, which I never thought I'd hear again, let alone in a dynamite new version.

Sun Rating: 4 out of 5