Supposedly, Polly Jean Harvey doesn’t have a phone in her Dorset house. But it takes a singular talent to come up with gems like her last album, 1995’s To Bring You My Love, and for Harvey reclusiveness seems to spark the creative process.

It’s worked again on Is This Desire?, the fifth album of a series that has set her apart from all other female singer / songwriters ever since she surfaced, an awkward punk-folkstrel, in 1991. It’s a unique record that will alienate as many as it enthrals. For every person captivated by a song like The Wind, with its whispered verses (‘Catherine liked high places/High up on the hills/A place for making noises/ Noises like the whales (cue whale noises)’) another will mutter about visible self-indulgence.

In truth, chunks of this album are breathtakingly embarrassing, like the aforesaid whispering, and lyrics that sound like an arty 17 year old’s diary entries. Former boyfriend Nick Cave’s spoor is detectable, too. Influencing songs like the opening Angelene, which concerns an unusually poetic hooker: ‘My first name Angelene / Prettiest mess you’ve ever seen / Love for money is my sin / Any man calls I’ll let him in / Rose is my colour and white / Pretty mouth and green my eyes...’ Cringesomely, she even tries to get into character on that one, recalling the sexual-icon period of a few years back when she tried out evening gowns and Wonderbras.

These flaws don’t affect the over-all quality, though or prevent Is This Desire? from being provocative, feminine and often beautiful. Harvey’s traditional subject matter, women and sexual desire, dominates. As ever, she’s torn between strength and the weakness admitted to on No Girl So Sweet. ‘Was I too weak? Was I a child?’ Harvey asks some shadowy male.

What gives Is This Desire? its clout is simply the way she sounds. Musically, she’s every woman: a cocktail croonstress on the title track, a howling witch on the distorto-fest. No Girl So Sweet, a care-in-the-community patient spookily mumbling to herself on The Wind, a lulling folk-singer on Catherine. But her much-vaunted penchant for stripping away every emotional layer has been modulated this time around. The obsessive - compulsive ambience of previous albums that made you fear for her stability is less apparent; in its place, something jewel-like and glowing.

Incidentally, this isn’t to ignore the contributions of sidemen Mick Harvey, John Parish et al, whose angry, suppurating guitars and tranquil,, jazz-tinged sunsets enrobe the songs. However, as they’d probably be the first to admit, Is This Desire?, with its complex nooks and niches and cravings, is a she thing.

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