After 20-odd years of will-they-or-won't-they energy, Neko Case and Tampa finally hooked up Friday night. And it only took one song to realize what we'd all been missing.

"I think this is going rather well for our first date ever!" the 48-year-old singer told the comfortably full and deeply appreciative crowd at the Orpheum in Ybor City.

And to think, a lot of fans there could just have easily swiped left. Lucinda Williams was playing at the same time across the bay in St. Pete, a real Sophie's choice for any fan of indie alt-country. But Case's first local headlining gig, a dusty, twangy trip through her much-loved catalog, was just too hard to miss -- even for the middle-agers who might have preferred to see her in a theater with seats instead of a standing-room GA club.

Because there were plenty of moments where it would've been nice to sit and soak in Case's dreamy, western compositions. With a sharp six-piece band behind her -- including a steel guitarist and banjoist and two female singers whose harmonies added the hallmark echo effect to Case's sharp, lacerating vocals -- the set drifted from dusty outsider ballads to tempo-turning changelings to a sort of heartland power pop, an update on Loggins or Petty or Mellencamp.

She played most of her latest album Hell-On, showcasing why it's earned some of the best reviews of her career. Singing of love and frustration, she put the alt back in alt-country with the drunkenly careening chords of Curse of the I-5 Corridor; and turned the exquisitely textured Winnie into a hallucinogenic sea chanty, erupting into tambourine claps at the end.

And while newbies like Halls of Sarah and Last Lion of Albion got plenty of people swaying and singing, the release for any older song was palpable. Extended ovations followed Maybe Sparrow and Come On, Come On, from 2006's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. And songs like the warm, back-porchy Calling Cards and bristling, punkish Man showed the range of her coyote-like voice.

The show was enveloping, pulling fans into Case's world of rueful lyrics and shape-shifting structures until even the beehive props hanging behind her began to look like an upside-down western landscape -- sort of the Coen Brothers by way of David Lynch.

More than once, Case apologized for taking her sweet time to play Tampa, but said she appreciated how the humidity turned her lion's mane of hair into a flame of copper frizz.

"It's so huge!" she said. "You should sell Florida in a can. You'd be wealthy."

Even with 24 songs in just under two hours, fans didn't get everything they wanted from Case's first Tampa show. When one fan yelled out for Star Witness in the encore, Case politely declined -- but then promised she'd play it the next time she came through town.

"We're in a relationship now, you guys!" she said. "We're going to make this work!"

That's the thing about good first dates, isn't it? They always leave you looking forward to the second.

Contact Jay Cridlin at cridlin@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8336. Follow @JayCridlin.