Her voice, while being more direct than on any of her previous work, is evocative of many other voices. Many of the tracks have definite Alison Krauss overtones. On "Tightly," she sounds strikingly like Bettie Serveert's Carol van Dijk. And although she doesn't reach for it, it's easy to imagine "Deep Red Bells" coming from the throat of Kristin Hersh. But rather than give the impression of being unfocused or cluttered, this style shifting actually helps to focus the album by letting the natural mood of a piece dictate its delivery. Whereas on Furnace her voice constantly strained to make everything as country-fried as possible, here it serves many different purposes — the purposes of individual songs. When a style fits a song, she uses it, displaying at once an ultimate respect for the music and a devout desire not to be pigeonholed as anything, least of all k.d. lang.

And I hear another, much less obvious influence in the music as well. Case spent a good deal of time in Vancouver, studying art and joining the punk band Maow, and I find it difficult to imagine after hearing Blacklisted that she wasn't during that time influenced by the sound of fellow Vancouver resident Veda Hille. Much of Blacklisted takes the same kind of chances that Hille takes, in terms of unconventional song structure and fractured, hallucinatory lyrics, even while adhering to tunefulness. Case seems to find on Blacklisted a middle ground between her last album and Hille's carefully skewed (if not downright bizarre) pop ideas.

It's a daring gambit of a record, really, not as country as many will be comfortable with, and certainly not as verse-chorus-verse as most music that uses banjo and pedal steel. It steps back from the near-formula of her former music, gives the whole thing some thought, and attacks it from an entirely different direction. That's a brave thing to do, and it pays off in spades.