NEW York folk-pop waif Suzanne Vega has spent recent years revisiting and stripping back her old songs for four themed Close Up retrospectives.

They amounted to a little too much navel-gazing, and fresh material has been long overdue since 2007’s Beauty And Crime. Vega had introduced new works at her Grand Opera House show in York in June 2012, but still in acoustic, sparse form. Now she has gone the other way on record, adding handclaps here, a choir there, a banjo over there, and even a 50 Cent sample of Candy Shop.

That said, she is not breaking new ground in the familiarly unusual but cold rhythms on her eighth studio album, and for all her bite and perception, she remains prone at 54 to over-elaboration and emotional ennui in her lyrics, still playing the cool, detached, very earnest folk philosopher. She is a lecturer in poet’s clothing, her muse and her music more chill than thrill.