This new album, the fourth from American singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy is, as the title suggests, a paradox. She’s folk, but with an indie angularity. There should be a health warning along with it, as with medication: do not drive or drink alcohol when listening, as it’s pretty intense.

Produced by Joel Henry, who has worked with Aimee Mann and Joan Baez, the instrumentation is stripped right back, the better to hear the beautiful vocals of Glaspy. As ever, the sounds she makes are completely intoxicating; from a yelp to a roar to a sigh – her full-throttle vibrato notwithstanding – she can silence a room and make big, tattooed men cry.

So it is here. This album is almost hermetically sealed, seemingly existing in its own time and space. She’s taking her lyrical scalpel to toxic relationships, as on the opener, ‘Michigan’. A lover is goaded, “You said you didn’t want me/So why come all this way?” In ‘Petty’, a woman is apologising to another for something he’s done, yet finds herself folding his laundry and slamming doors. On ‘Common Ground’, a partner is blowing hot and cold, and the catch in her throat is palpable. There are enough red flags here to create a psychology course.

Affairs of the heart are her strong suit, then; her social commentary, not so much. On ‘Martin Luther King Jr’ almost channeling early Bob Dylan, with harmonica and acoustic guitar, she comes a little unstuck with lyrics that are a little trite. But it’s a small blip in an album which is raw, heartbreaking and devastating, in its own hushed way.