POP/ROCK

Neko Case, "Middle Cyclone" (Anti-)

"The next time you say 'forever' I will punch you in your face," Case vows on this CD filled with cataclysmic love songs. It's her sixth studio album on her own, in a career that also includes her on-and-off membership in the New Pornographers. In her latest songs nothing is constant: not romance, not life, not memory, not even the rhythm or the shape of a melody. Putting her big, torchy voice behind larger-than-life imagery, she's fearless through every transformation, merging herself with storms -- one song is titled "This Tornado Loves You" -- and seeing herself in animals such as a killer whale and a vulture. She's as dangerous as she is devoted.

"I'm a man-man-man-, man-man-man-eater," she sings in the poppy refrain of "People Got a Lotta Nerve," adding, "But still you're surprised when I eat you." The album's most forthright song declares, "I'm an Animal," with marchlike drums and ringing electric guitars as she insists, "My courage is roaring like the sound of the sun."

On the surface, Case's songs qualify as alt-country or Americana. The production often harks back to 1960s and '70s rock, backing her concise melody lines with acoustic guitars or twang and reverb. But surreal, unexpected sounds -- echoes, voices, noise -- well up within those arrangements. Her version of Harry Nilsson's whimsically fatalistic "Don't Forget Me" becomes a lofty expanse of choral voices and multiple pianos.

Her own songs melt down structures. Instead of fixed verses or choruses, there are two-chord patterns that run as long as Case wants, or as short; they might add or subtract a beat, suddenly switch chords or support an entirely new tune in midsong. Subliminally that rhapsodic approach keeps the songs off-balance and suspenseful, ready for every possibility of disaster or exaltation.

Case performs April 26 at the State Theatre.

JON PARELES, New York Times

Shemekia Copeland, "Never Going Back" (Telarc)

Copeland is shaking things up with her fifth CD, a gritty, socially conscious effort that gives that her Grand Canyon-filling voice something new to say. The opening "Sounds Like the Devil" sets the tone with barbs like "I ain't got health care. ... I can't even afford to die." The noir-ish epic "Never Going Back to Memphis" is where Copeland digs the deepest. Spiked with an unhinged solo from guitarist Marc Ribot, Copeland's voice curls around richly murderous details such as, "He kept a .45 in a Crown Royal bag."

CHRIS BARTON, LOS ANGELES TIMES