Tyneside chanteuse Nadine Shah is a down-to-earth diva, leavening the melodrama of her music with dark humour. Working again with regular collaborator Ben Hillier, she draws on a period of personal upheaval with fifth album, Filthy Underneath, the first release on new Leeds-based label EMI North. Her playful candour is our listening pleasure.

Following the deceptively straight start of ‘Even Light’, she has way more fun with lead single ‘Topless Mother’, a Bo Diddley shuffle with a strident declamatory chorus of rhyming three-syllable names (‘Sinatra, Viagra, iguana’ for starters) which offers her twist on various misadventures in therapy, not least making a counsellor cry with her intransigent attitude. Elsewhere, Shah celebrates the characters she met while in recovery (‘he wrote a song for Elvis Presley / but Elvis never heard it’) on ‘Twenty Things’, and toys wickedly with counselling jargon on ‘You Drive, I Shoot’, featuring a poised, clipped and imperious vocal delivery against a tough, flinty backing.

She reserves much of her derision for ‘Sad Lads Anonymous’. This spoken-word odyssey drips with disdain for the seaside town they forgot to shut down which, for all its scornful authority, sounds like the product of waking up on a wrong side of the bed. The cacophony continues on ‘Food For Fuel’, though the verses are smooth and sultry. Throughout, Shah modulates the tone without compromising on character, from the prowling, percussive ‘Greatest Dancer’ to the poised electro of ‘Keeping Score’.

‘See My Girl’ contrasts plaintive vocals with voyeuristic lyrics, and slinky elegant 80s electronica with baroque synths, while she makes space for greater vulnerability on ‘Hyperrealism’, a lush torch song with softer contours, before reverting to the steely edges of ‘French Exit’. As always, somehow, Shah makes this intense trawl an enjoyable ride. 

Nadine Shah: Filthy Underneath is released by EMI North on Friday 23 February; main picture: Tim Topple.