<i> New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).</i> : *** 1/2 SUZANNE VEGA “99.9F” <i> A&M;</i>

You already know the artist as the Spalding Gray of folk music, a sort of dry, clever chronicler of life in the age of urban riots and sordid celebrity custody battles. Now meet Suzanne Vega the would-be Bangle, the sly flirt, the oracle of the underside. They’re all here, the familiar and the fresh, on the New York singer’s most wide-ranging and consistently brilliant effort to date.

The most surprising song on Vega’s fourth album is the hum-along “When Heroes Go Down,” whose title and bouncy vigor seem purposely to evoke the Bangles’ “Hero Takes a Fall.” Never much one to trade on her femininity, Vega tackles another new role, that of coquette, in “(If You Were) In My Movie,” a fantasy laid bare with delicious results.

And then there is the social commentary that Vega has always done so well, and never better than here: “Bad Wisdom,” perhaps about a young girl in need of an abortion, perhaps about something much less weighty; and “As Girls Go,” a nudge-nudge, wink-wink tale of transsexualism. Producer Mitchell Froom’s austere, off-kilter production embellishes without overshadowing Vega’s will-o’-the-wisp vocals.