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Neko Case will be at TPAC's James K Polk Theater in Nashville, TN -

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Neko Case will be joined by Lost in the Trees for this appearance.

There's a special challenge to being an artist in this increasingly fractured cultural age; a delicate balancing act, between being of your time, and striving for timelessness. Few contemporary artists even try. Neko Case is an exception.

Case's last album, 2006's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, brought her to that nexus where critical acclaim meets commercial success. But Case's impact can't be measured merely in chart placements or press plaudits. It's her ability to connect - on an uncommonly deep and meaningful level - with her audience. She's one those artists, you see: the kind whose songs linger in your head, your heart and soul long after the record has stopped spinning.

While Case's creative evolution has made for an impressive story so far, she's about to write the most remarkable chapter in that continuing saga with the release of her sixth studio album, Middle Cyclone.

The tornado that blows through the title and several songs on Middle Cyclone is an apt metaphor. Neko has famously taken her own twisted route, lighting for a time in the South, in the West, in the Northwest, in Canada, flirting with as many musical styles as homes. She is settled-or unsettled-in Tucson for the moment, with dreams of moving fulltime to the former dairy farm she owns in Vermont. She recorded the new album in both locations, as well as studios in Toronto and Brooklyn.

For Case, the beauty of making music, of creating, is that it remains a mysterious, confounding and, occasionally, contradictory process. "When I toured for Fox Confessor one of the things I said in interviews about that record was that I don't like writing love songs, that I can't write them," she recalls. "Of course, as soon as I said that, I ended up writing a bunch of love songs."

It should be noted here that Case's "love songs" are not the typical boy- meets-girl variety, as the opening track, "This Tornado Loves You," dramatically attests. "What would it be like to be pursued by a force of nature?" asks Case. "That's a frightening and exciting prospect."

With Neko's indefatigable touring band (guitarist Paul Rigby, bassist Tom V. Ray, vocalist Kelly Hogan, multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhouse and drummer Barry Mirochnick) building the bedrock of the tracks, Case was able to bring in a collection of friends and fellow travelers including M. Ward, Garth Hudson, Sarah Harmer, and members of The New Pornographers, Los Lobos, Calexico, The Sadies, Visqueen, The Lilys, and Giant Sand, among others. "Everyone who worked on the record had their input and sculpted things," says Case.

Ultimately, for Case, the songs and themes on Middle Cyclone express a long internal struggle, a pitched battle between nature and nurture. "Things like animals and nature, they're located in the tender receptor of my brain. And I'm just now trying to come to terms with the notion of loving people as much as I love those other things - because I grew up in a way that made me love the one but not the other.'

"So, I guess I've been working that out for myself, and these songs are my way of reconciling those feelings."