When it comes to the art of telling tales, Jim Thompson had it pegged. "There are 32 ways to write a story," the noir author famously observed, "but only one plot: Things are not as they seem." The story of Neko Case, similarly, could be told a number of different ways; but the facts, as always, yield only a part of the truth.

There is the basic, by now familiar biographical arc: Case's childhood in Washington State, art school in Vancouver, her early baptism into the world of country and gospel music, and contemporary gigs in distaff punk trios Maow and Cub, as well as a longer (and ongoing) stint in powerhouse Canadian pop group the New Pornographers. Since the late '90s, however, the bulk of Case's energies have been devoted to a thriving solo career. Following three critically lauded studio albums, 1997's The Virginian, 2000's Furnace Room Lullaby, and 2002's masterful Blacklisted; a quietly potent kitchen-recorded EP, Canadian Amp; and last year's brilliantly conceived concert collection The Tigers Have Spoken, Case reemerges with her latest, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

Two years in the making from conception to completion, the album is a culmination of sorts, the sound of an artist fully coming into her own and producing a career defining statement. Case's work has always hinted at a uniquely skewed gyroscope at the center of the music: her songs at once playful and heartfelt, artsy yet unpretentious, and capable of shelving offbeat imagery inside of classic compositional structures. Significantly, Fox Confessor is further fueled by Neko's refusal to limit her work along generic boundaries. Her role as producer is profoundly felt, as styles, influences and sonic signatures from dozens of musical traditions thread through the new songs, leaving the echo of their passing but combine to create a sound at once foreign and familiar.

Lyrically reflective and self-assessing, the twelve songs on the Fox Confessor are cast in a tone that is at once resigned ("Hold On, Hold On") yet far from pessimistic ("Maybe Sparrow"). It's an album where the storytelling offers exacting portraits of the transient and hyper real ("Margaret Vs. Pauline," "Star Witness," "That Teenage Feeling"), while opening windows to the still viable -- albeit sadly neglected these days--metaphors, lessons, or cautionary reflections derived through mythological creations ("Fox Confessor Brings The Flood"). Elsewhere, near-forgotten spirituals ("John Saw That Number") emote clear-eyed observations on our common lives.

Aside from the intro to "John Saw That Number" (recorded in the back stairwell of Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern) and "At Last" (tracked at Toronto's Iguana studio), the balance of the album was done at Tucson, Arizona's Wavelab Studio, with engineers Craig Schumacher and Chris Schultz. Produced and mixed by Neko and Darryl Neudorf, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood once again finds her imagistic lyrics and singular voice backed by a cadre of talented collaborators including longtime bandmates Jon Rauhouse and Tom V. Ray, frequent musical foils The Sadies, Giant Sand leader Howe Gelb, vocalist Kelly Hogan, Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino, as well as Canadian cohorts Brian Connelly and Paul Rigby. Former Flat Duo Jet Dexter Romweber and Rachel Flotard of Seattle punk-pop combo Visqueen also guest, as does legendary piano/keyboard/accordion genius Garth Hudson of the Band.

However, if Neko has always chosen the best of collaborative friends, what she reveals on the new album is that "the most tender place in my heart is for strangers" -- a statement which may or may not have seeds planted in the transient nowhere-is-home years of her childhood.

Having been moved from town to town after arriving in the world toward the end of 1970, she eventually settled in Tacoma, Washington. An only child, by the age of 15 she'd left home and quit school. Neko somehow managed to survive on her own, and soon steeped herself in the re-emerging punk scene that roamed wildly between Olympia and Seattle, working at a series of rock clubs and witnessing firsthand the transformative power of bands like the Screaming Trees, Girl Trouble, and Nirvana.

Although she maintains an affinity for punk music and its off-shoots (having begun her musical career as a drummer for The Del-Logs, The Propanes, and Maow), it was the discovery of an obscure spiritual album by Bessie Smith & Her Gospel Pearls that provided an important paradigm shift for her early on.

"I was 19," she once explained to an interviewer. "I was heavily into punk rock, and punk rock was really dogmatic and macho. But this record made me feel like, you know what, these people are singing about something they really care about. These ladies aren't kidding. And they sing about religion with more passion than anybody sings about anything -- not about love or sex or violence or anything. It's like their voices are these crazy cannons or something, and they could just blow shit out of their way with them. I wanted to be able to sing like that, because I thought that must've felt really good."

As it happened, that kind of vibrant voice lurked inside her own body--seemingly born of another era, much older and lived-in than what someone in her thirties should now possess, unleashed at equal turns raucous and otherworldly. Much, of course, has been made of her unique vocal talents, as well as the musical strength of her recordings. Yet it is her lyrical prowess that begs for greater analysis, for her ability to shape verse is on par with everything else that makes her albums so dynamic--her other voice, as it were.

Regardless, Neko is a major poet by any standard, a songwriter less interested perhaps in traditional narrative form than in distilling a pure moment of time. She's an artist whose songs are so textured in their presentation that the subtleties filter into the subconscious while the overall effect astonishes. But rather than each of her progressive albums disposing of what came before it, there is, instead, a sense of "continuation" at play -- in which every album exists like the subsequent chapter to a novel that grows more complicated and intriguing as it progresses.

So, then, if her 1997's country-flavored debut The Virginian stands as a welcoming prologue, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood takes us much deeper into the story where, as she writes and sings in "Dirty Knife," "cascading letters pool on the stairs/the grass is high, the cats are wild/you can't even touch the tip of their tails/and the blood runs crazy with giant strides."

The continued evolution of her as a creator, producer, personality and live performer has been as fascinating to witness as the music she makes. With Blacklisted, her 2002 masterpiece and an album that deserved every bit of its widespread praise, came validation, too, for those serious music lovers and insightful fans who already knew the synthetic label of "alt-country" would fail to pigeonhole her work or vision.

Neko claims no genre, nor utilizes any classic formula for her songs and singing. More than anything she thrives in the spaces in between her music. As with the highest art, the negative space should be calculated, too. What isn't readily seen also carries its own weight-- an articulated emptiness, a space defined and made human by whatever has sought to confine it; and while her artistic integrity may never have been in doubt, on Fox Confessor Brings The Flood Neko has again shown how capable she is of accessing her best instincts to forge something meaningful with words and sounds -- a record that's confessional, poignant, and, ultimately, an honest representation of where she is today.

In 1997, Case recorded her solo debut, The Virginian, a traditional country album that revealed The Voice--rough around the edges but possessing a vulnerable strength and range that has caused critics and her growing legion of loyal fans to swoon ever since. Her second album, Furnace Room Lullaby, was released in 2000 and garnered countless accolades in publications like The New York Times, GQ, Esquire, Interview, People, and Time.

Since then, Case has been hard at work, touring non-stop on her own and opening for folks like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. But Case is not simply a solo artist; she delves into any opportunity to work with other musicians. Among her other projects is the beautiful old- time country she sings with Carolyn Mark as the Corn Sisters. She also records and performs as one of The New Pornographers, who released an album of rollicking guitar pop at the end of 2000 to their own fair share of glowing press and a Juno Award for Best Alternative Album.

Some recent press for "Fox Confessor:"

"Neko Case is well on her way to well-deserved status as a music legend for our generation" - Bust Magazine

"...an ambitious take on some resonant fairy tales and folk stories" - LA Times

"Nobody today does eerie dust-bowl balladry and anachronistic rustic- murder milieu quite like Case. Combining country, folk, and old- school rock, she faithfully invokes scenes of late-night wandererings illuminated by a jalopy's lone functional headlight." - Pitchfork