It has always been regarded as an act of profound heresy when acoustic-folk musicians undergo a mysterious change of life and, throwing caution to the winds, goose their tunes to the max with mega-watt electronics. Though I was a mere waif at the time, I can still remember the huge scandal that ensued when Bob Dylan went electric—an event so cataclysmic the Johnson presidency crumbled in a matter of months.

The news that Suzanne Vega had made the Big Switch from her coffeehouse acoustic sound to some strung-out heavy electronics similarly seemed to have the potential for widespread social unrest. But no, there were no angry demonstrations or howls of protest at her recent McAllister Auditorium concert, and even the most die-hard Vega fans found little to complain about, so smoothly was the transition finessed.

Which only adds to the mystery. Namely, how is it possible for someone to be so stylistically diverse and still weave such a uniquely personal sound? Partly it is Vega’s lyrics, which set a tone of their own and which the music then follows, lyrics that combine folk-narrative with symbolist and surrealist traces, with Baudelaire and Patchen as well as Ed Sanders, Patti Smith and other beat, punk and post-punk permutations.

And then there’s the voice—breathy, understated and very finely controlled, a cocktail of Remy Martin and ether over dry ice. With a twist. A subtle ribbon of black silk coiling around her lyrics like smoke rings off smoldering opium.

Any artist able to combine such a weird mix of effects into a seamlessly sui generis sound is clearly no normal folky. The new album’s electronic overlays are sometimes almost techno-industrial in effect, yet manage to enhance rather than distract from the vocals. Vega is unabashedly a towny, and her electronic arsenal alludes to the percussive rumblings of the urban hive.

Still, it all goes back to the personal, the eerie intimacy of the lyrical message. In “Blood Makes Noise” (“It’s ringing in my ear and I can’t really hear you in the thickening of fear…”) the electronic staccato builds a scaffold of tension around a tale as evocative as it is minimal, a Kafkaesque soliloquy. Yet when we arrive at the perhaps autobiographical “Blood Sings” (“The story that repeats of a child who had been left alone at birth / Left to fend and taught to fight…”), the stark simplicity of an acoustic guitar and a fatefully understated vocal delivery is almost oracular in effect.

Oddly, Vega’s vocals on the album display less range or virtuosity than she did live—just as the instrumentals were more “tribal” and took more chances before the audience. Which makes the album sound slightly robotic by comparison. But that’s a small complaint to make about one of the very few real artists to emerge in the last decade. On balance, 99.9° F seems as poetically and musically brilliant as its predecessor, Solitude Standing. Suzanne Vega is true blue—an original in an age of replicas.