The CDs that the postal system delivers regularly to my door expose me to three kinds of acts: (1) those I know such as, yesterday, longtime folksinger Tom Rush; (2) those I've only heard of; and (3) those who are new to me. Each brings with it the prospect of pleasure, disappointment or indifference. Canadian guitarist Sue Foley, who is in the second category, issues music of an exceptional order on The Ice Queen, her debut recording on the Edmonton-based Stony Plain label.

I confess to a certain level of surprise. If I'd thought of her at all, I presumed Foley to be just another competent, if rather generic, white blues artist. Happily, she turns out not to be that at all. Blues, which she performs exquisitely, is hardly her entire persona. It can also be a point of departure from which to explore other rooted forms, prominently rock, folk and jazz. Her instrument is, usually, a Fender electric, which she does not employ to blast the listener out of the room. What one gets instead is restraint and precision.

She is, besides, a superior vocalist and songwriter. Of the dozen songs only two are not originals, and those two are inspired choices. One, which closes the album, is a solo acoustic version of the traditional hobo song "Cannonball Blues" (the template for another folk song, "White House Blues," later a bluegrass standard, which circulated after President McKinley's assassination in September 1901). The other is George Brooks's darkly comic "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair," unsettlingly communicated in a voice at once giddy and mordant. The only comparably themed song I know of is Tom T. Hall's "Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On." Who would have thought capital punishment could be made to seem funny?

Though Queen is pretty much wall-to-wall enjoyable, a close listener is bound to deduce that it did not arise out of congenial circumstances. The inspiration for much of it appears to have been a bruising break-up, chronicled most explicitly -- oddly -- in the rollicking, pure rock 'n' roll "Run," though the languid jazz-pop "Death of a Dream" and the nourish tango "The Dance" return to what one imagines to be the same experience. Foley's private life, it goes without saying, is her own business. I mention this only because her lyrics and music evoke psychic wounds without clothing them in self-pity or self-absorption. We've all been there in one way or degree, and her reserved writing and soulful interpretation command one's attention and sympathy.

In short, Foley is off to an auspicious start on her Stony Plain debut. One looks forward to the next installment.