- Cool-eyed Alicia Keys was just 20 years old when she released her startling debut album, “Songs in A Minor.” With a sophisticated blend of gentle musicianship and defiant dignity, she comprised the gorgeous ballad “Fallin’” out of “Moonlight Sonata,” plunging those ivories confidently into tough 2001 beats.

       Since then she’s steadily turned out the hits �" most notably her exhilarating 2009 collaboration with Jay-Z, “Empire State of Mind.” She’s become a feminist icon for superwomen. Refusing to push her beauty when her music is where her truth lies. Bob Dylan observed, “There’s nothing about that girl I don’t like.”

       I’ve been increasingly disappointed that she hasn’t done anything more revolutionary with her talent, but have come to accept that Keys doesn’t want to overhaul urban soul, she simply wants to deliver good, solid, heartfelt blocks of it. On those terms, her fifth studio album is her best record in years. Keys has retooled and reinvented herself, however subtly and slightly, on every album.

       “Girl On Fire” opens the same way each one of her previous albums does, with a short, pensive piano piece. The quiet “De Novo Adagio” is meant to set the stage for the drama to come, but it handily accomplishes other things as well. It reminds listeners that Keys is a classically trained musician, that she graduated from Professional Performing Arts School and studied at Columbia University. Her studies no longer determine her sound the way they once did, but a moment like this reminds you she’s a serious artist.

       “It’s been a while/ I’m not who I was before,” are the opening lines of the introduction cut “Brand New Me,” a slow-burning declaration of independence co-written with Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé. The emotional involvement is immediate as she draws you into an empowered narrative, which does what she does best and rises above: “I’m not expecting sorry/ I’m too busy finding myself.” It unfurls from a simple piano motif �" heavy on her trademark echo. Her keyboard is, as ever, the intimate sound of vulnerability facing up to the big drums--and sampled sirens--of a gothic city. The melody is familiar, and the programmed percussion is what it is. But the bold, soulful vocal �" with just a scratch of catch in the throat �" refuses to let you go.

       “Elsewhere New Day” finds her improvising a bit over an upbeat bass line. The title track “Girl on Fire” has a thrilling energy and compelling melody. As right-on as ever, the beautiful solo-piano ballad “Not Even the King,” which features just Keys and her piano, finds her breathing new, believable life into the old truth that money doesn’t make happiness.

       Keys has always chosen her collaborators well, as shown in the Bruno Mars duet “Tears Always Win,” which manages to split the difference between Keys and Mars, the retro flourishes, with the shuffling drumbeat and the doo wop backing vocals, which all reinforce rather than distract from the pain in Keys’ vocals and lyrics. With its bedroom setting and emotional insomnia, the song manages to come across, holding its own against one of Keys’ finest moments.

       A pair of ballads, “One Thing” and “101”, sound good on their own, but founder as back-to-back closers. The latter culminates in a loud coda that’s among the heaviest passages Keys has recorded, full of shouted hallelujahs and some startlingly violent beats. It’s a risky move, but she doesn’t really pull it off. “101” makes for a gently unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise assured album. It never quite lives up to its theme of rebirth. Given the range and power she’s showed in the past, it doesn’t really need to.

       Keys throws herself into these songs; her voice quavering during the rawer moments, as though the notes are well within her range but the emotions are not. Keyes delivers with the spine-tingling self-possession for which all those reality TV talent-show contestants are so desperately reaching for. If this album doesn’t find Keys consistently “on fire,” it does at least see her classily smoldering and occasionally ablaze. “Girl on Fire” is an album about rebirth and renewal.