“When you tire of all the bright lights … haste that’s killing and you’re willing to stay home nights.”

“Wow, take a look at that out there!”

As she teetered unsteadily onstage in uncharacteristically lofty heels and a matching black cocktail dress, Neko Case stared at the frigid winter visage of Columbus Circle and Central Park South hanging behind her like a dark, twinkling curtain. On this Friday evening, Case and her five-piece band were making two sold-out appearances, back-to-back, as part of the Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, and the intimate setting in the Frederick P. Rose Hall’s Allen Room—replete with a picture-perfect view of the city from the theatre’s main window and couples sipping wine at a clutch of candle-lit tables down in front, as if in some flapper-era jazz club—proved a perfect complement to the atypically hushed qualities of her music (which Case would later dub her “incredibly silent show”). Case’s 90-minute opening set proved a compelling portrait of an artist at the very peak of her considerable talents.

“When the new crowd starts to bore you … just remember there is someone to adore you.”

“I’ll try not to be terrified; we just need that acid we took to kick in. And I promise not to leap out this window once it takes effect.”

Case’s self-deprecating stage banter notwithstanding—a routine indebted to the humorous between-song chatter of Wanda Jackson and one she’s perfected alongside frequent partner-in-crime and fellow vocalist Kelly Hogan—she nor her band gave any appearance of even being the slightest bit cowed by their unusual environs. Focusing on the back end of her five-album solo catalog, Case’s set list was drawn largely from 2006’s spectacularly accomplished Fox Confessor Brings The Flood. Since she first arrived on the then-trendy alt-country scene in 1997 with the bawdy, rollicking The Virginian, Case has taken steps to broaden her sonic palette without altogether distancing herself from the country music she so clearly loves (and to which her soul-stirring voice is so well-suited).

In the spirit of the evening, Case not only showed off her own songwriting chops (spotlighted on the Byrds-like jingle-jangle of her latest album’s “Hold On, Hold On” and a stunning, near-a cappella read of her signature ballad “I Wish I Was The Moon”) but also threw in a few select covers from other deserving American songwriters such as Freakwater’s Catherine Ann Irwin (“Hex”) and the master himself, Bob Dylan (“Buckets Of Rain,” punctuated by the fluid, dexterous lap steel of longtime Case collaborator Jon Rauhouse). Leaning down to adjust her microphone, Case proceeded to bonk herself on the head with it, producing a loud “pop” before asking the audience, “Hey, did you hear that?” like a better-dressed version of Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, setting himself up for the punchline by hitting his head with a shoe before proclaiming “I’m so wasted!”

“When the kicks go that it brings you … you will hanker for an anchor just to cling to.”

“Sorry about that,” Case apologized after her acoustic guitar veered badly out of tune on “Maybe Sparrow” after having broken a few strings in the effort. “We were shredding pretty hard there for a minute.”

“Shredding” and Case’s spidery, country-noir sound don’t precisely fit hand in glove, but given her prehistory as a Vancouver art student who began her music career in the punk bands associated with the Northwest grunge scene of that era, it’s not exactly unusual to hear Case use language normally associated with other musical genres. Case’s body of work can be identified by its adherence to older, more traditional norms despite her tendency to push well beyond what most listeners would consider to be “traditional” country components. For one thing, this particular touring band is by far the best she’s assembled to date. In addition to Rauhouse and Hogan, Paul Rigby supplied various flavors of reverb-shaded guitar color, former Bottle Rocket Tom Ray provided the supple stand-up bass that anchored Case’s songs, and Barry Mirochnick kept his rhythmic underpinnings from overshadowing Case’s vocals by playing with brushes and making economic use of space.

But most of all, what shone through all evening was Case’s undeniable vocal gift, an awe-inspiring instrument that can proudly stand beside legends such as Patsy Cline or Kitty Wells, soaring and dipping with the emotional weight of her music and infusing her down-at-the-heels stories-in-song with just the right amount of grittiness. On Fox Confessor, Case’s tales of regret, resignation and ruin—sometimes all woven into a single song, such as the album’s darkly ominous closer “The Needle Has Landed”—are rendered in a less-narrative fashion, thus pushing her songs further away from country’s more traditional storytelling mode even as her musical accompaniment continues to align her more closely with Nashville than not.

“When you’ve lived it up ‘til it’s got you down… look for me, I’ll be around.”

“I hope you’re all comfortable out there tonight. One of these days I’m going to do my set lying down on a big bed, up here onstage. You know you’ve made it in this business when you can do your thing lying on your back.”

As the audience gazed out the venue’s glass cockpit into the New York night, staring right back at us were apartment dwellers from across the street, looking out their windows to see what was going on over here. It was certainly a strange parallel, but one I can’t remember ever having seen before. The same can be said for Case’s remarkable show. As she wound down the evening with a pair of encore covers she had used to close out her Portland, Ore., show just a few weeks earlier (the traditional gospel thumper “John Saw That Number” and the Sarah Vaughan torch-burner “Look For Me (I’ll Be Around)”), Case’s aw-shucks, down-home façade quickly slipped from view, transforming her into the kind of sophisticate many of us have believed her to be since first laying ears on her. In the city that never sleeps, Neko Case made her bed and is now quite happily lying in it. On some stage somewhere, apparently.

—Corey duBrowa