One phrase comes to mind when one hears Set Sail -- "amiably eccentric" -- and another when one seeks to describe Carley Wolf's persona -- "hippie chick." I mean them both in the most generous possible way.

Judging from her photos, Wolf cannot have been born when the first generation of hippies roamed the Earth. Still, she must have something of the experience in her genes. A native Texan, she writes that she was "raised in the country with a loving musical family and a pack of wolves." Given her last name -- if that is indeed her birth name -- that can be read other than literally. Still, one of her videos shows her cavorting with ... well, they look rather like wolves, albeit with the friendly domestic character of dogs.

In any event, what matters for our purposes is that Set Sail is well above the usual singer-songwriter fare. Wolf has an impressively inventive musical imagination, in which she integrates multiple genres (jazz, gypsy rhythms, folk, pop) into a distinctively personal style. Her voice -- both literal and metaphorical -- is rich, supple and hard to resist whether it is waxing philosophical, gloomy, erotic or playful. Here and there, the songs turn lyrically and emotionally complex, but they are always accessible, resounding with a range of influences which ordinarily one doesn't expect to emanate from a single disc. I don't recall, for example, hearing anybody else who seems -- on occasion anyway -- like both Rickie Lee Jones and the Incredible String Band.

Multi-instrumentalist Wolf gets able backing from a four-piece band. One member is the ubiquitous fiddler Katy Rose Cox, and there's cello player David "Deemo" Moss. Jonathan Konya and Steve Collins handle mostly percussive instruments. Together, they create a shimmering, atmospheric sound while leaving the singing very much up front. I'm not sure you could call this "folk-rock" exactly. Perhaps the title song comes closest, and "Rocking Chair" is at least vaguely reminiscent of something traditional, maybe the Carter Family in an alternate reality. But whatever else it might be, Set Sail is among the most beautiful and intelligent -- and, in its own highly idiosyncratic fashion, rooted -- acoustic-pop records I've heard in the last year.