“Persona Grata” is an amazing opening track, a true 80’s epic that sounds like it could have been an outtake from Kate Bush’s The Dreaming. Powerful and absurd proclamations of love (“I’m your whipping boy!”), dissonant chiming synth runs, and a ripping sax fill into an ambient bridge? Sign me the hell up.

The rest of the record doesn’t live up to the promise of that track, but it certainly lives up to what it says on the tin: a singer-songwriter-80’s-genre-pivot record with Peter Gabriel’s guitarist, Simple Minds’ drummer, good ol’ Pino P on the bass, and longtime OMD and China Crisis collaborator Mike Howlett producing. As such a pedigree would promise, there’s a bit of cheese, and some horns and synths that don’t age well. But there are still a good amount of fun, deeply 80’s pop tunes here, like step-aerobics bop “Temptation” and maudlin power-ballad “One Night”. Armatrading’s vocal range is truly astonishing, and she shows it best on Joe Jackson-assisted crooner “Love by You” and on the closer “Strange”, where she sustains the notes in her lower register so beautifully that for a second I thought I was listening to a vaporwave remix instead of the real deal.