's move to Los Angeles got off to a shaky start when the musician was nearly struck by a car. Physically unscathed but rattled, processed her startling agoraphobic episode into "Don't Leave Me Now," an ebullient bolt of techno-pop she delivers with irrepressible zest. An ideal choice for the lead single of , it fittingly leads the album, her fourth, representative not just for its might but its additional production input from , aka , aka not ' -- 's lone creative partner on her first three LPs. Other tracks were made with the likes of , (aka ), and , and it's just as notable, maybe more so, that wrote some of the material with other artists in mind. (Her and 's work on 's "Pandora's Box" was the first evident result from this development.) While has never come across as diffident, she is at her most poised and direct on , another serving of bubbly avant-pop only she could have made. The range of sounds and emotions is a little greater here. "Don't Cry on My Pillow" is a frosted and rigid rebuke with 's sour falsetto instructing a lame partner to keep their hands off her keyboards and not call her mom. On "Marathon," a lightly pulsating, high-gloss slow jam with nimble synth bass, is just as commanding and more explicit about her expectations in the bedroom. The songs landing somewhere between those extremes deal in more general terms of anticipation, blooming romance, heartache, uncertainty, and anxiety. "Midnight Ontario," with cinematic inspiration from and a highly frictional 2-step skitter ("Where were you in '82 and '92?"), contains 's most transfixing vocals, switching between aching sighs and a plaintive lower register that evokes . Speaking of late-'90s R&B, the next track, the bumping and ecstatic "Limbo," is the closest has gotten to a track worthy of a compilation. ~ Andy Kellman