Fox Confessor Brings the Flood Anti/Epitaph Music   •••• Sound   ••••

The latest from solo artist (and New Pornographer) Neko Case features a host of death-themed songs that meld American Gothic with Eastern European fable imagery. It touches on such fun topics as innocent-prey animals ("Maybe Sparrow"), car-crash victims ("Star Witness"), and crazed, murderous families ("Dirty Knife"). Meanwhile, Case's clear-as-ice, cold-as-steel vocals are framed by the gauzy sounds of jangly guitars, cellos, bowed basses, and Garth Hudson's hall-of-mirrors keyboards. The results are, one surmises, as intended: quietly disquieting.