Apparently, some of singer-songwriter/force of nature Neko Case’s new album, “Middle Cyclone,” was recorded in an old barn – and it sounds like it. The record is filled with memories, but it also has an empty, echoing space, room for ghosts and melancholy. It feels exposed and confessional in a way that none of her previous albums do; the lyrics are works of emotional free-association and dream flow rather than polished poetry, and the music is truly memorable but almost never catchy. Case’s deliberately thorny vocal phrasing collides with stop-and-start rhythms and expansive sound collages to exhilarating effect; the soundscapes, which incorporate music boxes, strings, odd squeaky noises and a chorus of aging pianos, among other elements, are more ambitious than anything Case has done before. Best of all, Case never shows off her voice with wails and melodrama here – she just sings, pure and simple, sailing sincerely through a whirlwind succession of stormy ballads.

If 2006’s “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” provides fleeting images of Case’s inner life amid its poetic and melodic pleasures, “Cyclone” gives the full tour of all her dark and dusty rooms. The first song, “This Tornado Loves You,” is pure exuberance despite its violence (“Carved your name across three counties, ground it in with bloody hides / Their broken necks will line the ditch ‘til you stop this madness / I want you”). From there it’s a long, introspective journey with appearances by killer animals, poisonous love, Death and harrowing self-doubt. The bleakness crests in “The Pharaohs,” a ghostly sigh of mourning for a life of wrong love (“I want the pharaohs, but there’s only men”). But there are also glimmers of hope, like the lyrical, worldly-wise lullaby “Magpie to the Morning” and the passionate declaration of self-acceptance “I’m an Animal” (“There’s some things I’m still quite sure of: I love you this hour / This hour, today / and heaven will smell like the airport.”). And even the saddest songs can be unexpectedly funny, as in the closing lines of the wistful “Next Time You Say Forever:” “The next time you say forever / I’ll punch you in your face.”

The album closes on a decidedly eccentric – and questionably satisfying – note. Track 14, the record’s final song, is the inscrutable, grim, vaguely ecological prophecy “Red Tide” (“The salty tentacles shrink in the sun / but the red tide is over, the mollusks, they have won”). Track 15, entitled “Marais la Nuit,” is a full half-hour of frog noises, completely devoid of music. Is this a bold and admirable choice, or the most pretentious thing in the world? I’ve listened to the whole thing a few times and yet haven’t decided. However, any album that can get me to listen to a half-hour of ambient frog noise more than once has got to be pretty strong stuff.

Rating: 4 out of 5