“I never thought about singing,” singer/ multi-instrumentalist Joan Armatrading says, while surveying her storied career. “I write songs, and I sing because that is how you get to hear the songs.”

If she sounds reluctant, then Armatrading can take comfort in knowing that her legion of fans—many of them devotees since she released her debut album nearly 50 years ago— hang on to every astute, candid, carefully chosen word she puts into those songs. And now they have a new reason to thank the 70-year-old consummate artist: Consequences, Armatrading’s 20th studio release, is one of her most absorbing to date.

As she’s always done, on new songs like the title track, “Already There” and “To Anyone Who Will Listen”— each of which is packed with rich, revealing imagery— Armatrading bares her soul. Likewise, during “Glorious Madness,” another highlight, she sings: “We won’t bother to say we’re sorry/ We won’t bother to explain/ That we still believe in magic and we’re living a fairy tale.” But then she offers: “And I say, who wants to stop a merry-go-round?/ Most times you want it to go faster/ This is a glorious madness, this is madness of the heart/ You’ve got me whirling on a moonlit planet, the shape of a blue marble.”

So what is Armatrading’s primary focus on Consequences? “Nearly all my albums are about love,” she says with her characteristic forthrightness and a slight chuckle. “They’re all about how people communicate with each other, the emotional ties that they have with each other. They’re also about what regard people have for each other, even if they’re actually just trying to prove something to somebody else. It’s always people that I write about. And that’s been [the same] from day one. So it’s no different, but because there are lots of new people, and different ways of looking at things, I try to write things in different ways.”

She elaborates: “One day, I was on a train and saw some young girls who were very excitedly talking about olives. One young girl was completely into olives. She’d just discovered them; they were the best thing in the world! I was really taken because that’s incredible. Olives are new to her; it’s an exciting thing. I wrote this song called ‘Lovers Speak,’ and it’s the same thing. [The tune ended up as the title track of her 2003 release.] You look at people in love and they talk as if they’re saying the most incredibly deep, meaningful foreign language-y thing. And really what they’re saying is: ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ But their heads are right by each other and they’re whispering love. It seems very intimate and very secretive and nobody else can possibly understand: ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’”

For Consequences, as she has done for virtually all of her albums of the 21st century, Armatrading not only wrote all of the songs and sang them, but also self-produced, engineered and even supplied all of the LP’s instruments. (To name a few, she’s credited with playing guitar, keyboards, drums, strings and effects.) Her decision to go that route came easily.

“From the start, when I’ve done my demos, I’ve always done everything myself,” explains Armatrading, who was born in the West Indies but moved to Great Britain as a young child. “Since I wrote the song, I reckon I should know. When I made my first record [Whatever’s For Us] in 1972, there was a producer there, but the producer was helping me to communicate with musicians because I was incredibly shy and new. I knew what I wanted, and I was able to communicate that, if not directly to the musicians, then to the producer. I’ve always said that I should have had a production credit on all my albums, but I didn’t.”

As with her singing, Armatrading credits the act of songwriting with giving her the impetus to learn how to play so many instruments, work the knobs in the control room and take full control of her music. But she also divulges that there is an element of her personality that gave her the push to go full DIY.

“I’m very quiet; I like my privacy,” Armatrading says. “I’m not interested in me shining, but I’m incredibly big[1]headed and interested in my songs shining. I want people to know about the music, and know the words and the melodies that I’m writing. Sometimes I don’t really care what other people think. I just think, ‘Do I like it?’ If I like it, I’m happy.”

And right now, she’s quite happy indeed. “I’m still trying to work out why I’m so excited,” she says about Consequences. “I’m excited about all the albums, don’t get me wrong, but I feel it’s almost like a discovery that I’m going through. I’ve played the guitar for however long, but I still feel as if it’s a new thing. I feel like I’ve suddenly discovered how to play the guitar. And I know it’s me playing it, but I just love the piano playing, too. It’s really nice,” she says, then returns to her first thought: “It’s very exciting.

“I do it because I like it,” she adds. “And I do it because I’m trying to get better at what I do. That’s all I’m trying to do all the time: get better at what I’m doing. When I write a song, I don’t dwell on that song. I think, ‘The next time I write, I’m sure I can make it better than that last one.’ That’s all I’m aiming for every time—just to try and be better.”

Can she ever see herself stopping? “No, that’s not going to happen,” she responds definitively. “Not in terms of writing. I’m writing till I’m not here anymore.”