What to say about a singer who, in a press release for her own new album, remarks, “My style is odd, I don’t know what genre this is,” then compares herself to Bulgarian folk singers and suggests she might have been, in another time, “a caller of wasps?” On her album cover, she’s depicted wearing a headdress of cigarettes and ignoring a shoulder shooting flames. Whether that all raises or diminishes expectations, the largely self-produced Hell-On isn’t impenetrable in the slightest. “Bad Luck” might find Neko Case ruminating on various misfortunes, but they’re harmless ones (“I chipped my tooth on an engagement ring,” “ate a black fly in the cream”), and it’s set to a frisky melody accessible enough to have graced the Top 40 in a more innocent decade. The title track, with Case pondering the mysteries of both God and herself (“I am not a mess, I’m a wilderness, yes”), makes use of kalimba, autoharp and guitar to set its exotic temperament but, by the time she reaches her chorus (“Nothing quite so poison as a promise”), harmonizing sweetly with Rachel Flotard, it’s settled into something approaching the accessible. “I write songs from a feeling of solidarity with folks who feel alone or isolated. I think I’m trying to comfort people in this way,” says Case in that same press release. That works too. Neko Case has never been an easy one to pin down. That’s precisely why she’s so worthwhile.