“Hello, stranger,” Neko Case sings off the top of her eighth album, and it’s a welcome reintroduction, given that Neon Grey Midnight Green arrives seven years after its predecessor. Case spent a good chunk of her time away writing her best-selling memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, a no-holds-barred account of her hardscrabble upbringing, and in a sense, Neon Grey Midnight Green feels like a continuation of that introspective work. As the first entirely self-produced album of her career, it provides an unfiltered glimpse into her musical mind, where she conjures a surrealist swirl of classic-country balladry, lush ’60s orchestral pop, dissonant punk, and avant-garde experimentation. It’s also a profoundly personal record, informed by the deaths of some longtime indie-rock allies: On “Winchester Mansion of Sound,” she pays tribute to Flat Duo Jets lead vocalist Dexter Romweber with a baroque piano lullaby that gives way to a lovingly nostalgic invocation of the “Down Down Baby” clapping-game sing-along. On the equally haunting and heavenly “Match-Lit,” she and guest Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire summon the spirit of The Sadies’ Dallas Good by quoting a song they all bonded over, the Mickey & Sylvia/Everlys standard “Love Is Strange.” At times, Neon Grey Midnight Green’s dream-state logic leads Case into bizarre uncharted territory: The theatrical spoken-word jazz poem “Tomboy Gold” is a lot closer to Laurie Anderson than Loretta Lynn. But while such outré excursions mark Neon Grey Midnight Green as the most eccentric entry in Case’s canon to date, the album is ultimately anchored by towering, string-swept torch songs—like “Wreck” and “An Ice Age”—that make a convincing case for Case’s gale-force voice to be recognized as the eighth wonder of the world.