That's not meant as a simple label for lyrics full of wolves, sparrows, clouds and eagles, though Case's love of nature and Ukrainian folk tales doesn't hurt her songs' resulting charm. Rather, her keen look at the world has sharpened to its finest point yet, and her stories and images are the kinds that great folk singers like Dylan once employed to earn their fans' trust and devotion. You won't just sing the words out loud after listening to the haunting melody of "Star Witness," assisted by the able hands of Garth Hudson (The Band) and Joey Burns (Calexico), you'll get stuck in the scene where "my true love drowned in a dirty old pan of oil," staring at a car's wreckage and hearing Case, after pondering the futility of being sad over the whole thing, cry out anyway: "Don't let him die." And certainly, this "folk" album isn't Peter, Paul and Mary territory--riveting country-rockers the Sadies back Case on a few tracks, and she skips the metaphors on bold, lonely songs like "That Teenage Feeling." Fox Confessor's success comes from more than Case's voice; it comes from her perspective, summed up by album closer "When the Needle Touched Down." "An eagle swooped down from a semi-trailer/Took the name of your town from a sharp-toothed freighter/The needle's the same that recorded and played/When you left me at the Greyhound the year I moved away"--Case looks at her world through eyes born in America, raised elsewhere and aimlessly seeking some sense of a home, be that a city or a true love.