"I called home and said I think I need to see this through. Something special is going on."

If singers could be weather conditions, Tift Merritt would be a soft autumn breeze. There's something about her music that evokes change and remembrance of things past, much as the fall season does -- and yet Merritt's clear, wistful voice has a reassuring quality about it, a tone that seems to comfort even as her thematic concerns tend to address the melancholy side of life. On her latest album Another Country, the North Carolina singer/songwriter gets to the heart of numerous matters, with inspiration from an extended stay in Paris last year. It was a fateful trip, but Merritt didn't go there intending to make a record...or really to do anything in particular.

"I went there thinking that I was just gonna kind of catch up on my sleep," said Merritt during a recent telephone chat. "I didn't really think I had anything to say. But I found this apartment online that had a piano in it, and I thought, well heck, no point in missing this. So when I got there I really surprised myself, and I just started to write. Things like being away, being outside my own language, and being in a new place; it was just really fueling a fire that was very unexpected. So that was how I knew I'd stay. I called home and said I think I need to see this through. Something special is going on."

What was intended originally to just be a getaway for a few weeks ended up lasting much longer, and inspired some of the most stirring and poignant tunes Merritt has penned since her acclaimed 2002 debut Bramble Rose. That disc earned the sort of reviews that would spoil some artists. The Times of London called it "the best release by a new artist, in any genre." "Imagine the Rolling Stones recording a country album in Muscle Shoals with Dusty Springfield singing lead," declared a scribe at Amazon. It wouldn't be the first time Merritt would be compared to Springfield, and other popular singers as well. Her 2004 release, Tambourine, was more stylistically varied than its predecessor and its title cut was one of the sauciest, most rockin' numbers Merritt had recorded. But career-wise, she remained a slow burner, the type of artist you either discovered on your own or maybe decided to check out after reading one of those rave reviews. Merritt certainly doesn't just churn product out for the sake of it.

"The work of being a musician today is not just, you put your record out and then you take a deep breath," she said. "I've been on tour pretty much without stopping since February. I've only had one week off."

Naturally it helps a touring artist if they have a barrelful of stirring new tunes to play, and Merritt's sojourn to France proved fruitful in that regard. She was more surprised than anyone about this.

"There really and truly was no thought about making an album or whether anybody would like it. I was just writing for myself, trying to make sense of my life. I didn't know what I was making, just that I was making something. And that's a good feeling."

Another Country contains some of the loveliest vocals Merritt's ever recorded, showing her fully inhabiting the songs and inviting the listener in. There's the jangly folk rock of "Broken," Merritt's delicate piano playing on the title song—which which finds her declaring that "Love is another country/ And I wanna go...Wanna go with you"—and the revealing "Hopes Too High," a gently loping acoustic tune that compels close listening. "No place to run for a girl like me/ A whole lot of used-to's and supposed-to-be's/ I wanna burn like August/ Shine like gold dust/ Where everyday living can't hold me," Merritt sings in one verse, before delivering one of many unforgettable choruses on the disc. The effect is uncommonly intimate.

"I didn't want this record to be overly delicate," said Merritt. "But I did want it to be a first-person experience, just one person extending a hand to another person, one person writing a letter to one other person. I didn't want it to be some big, splashy in your face affair."