Homeland Nonesuch ****

Always a nagging thorn in the side of what any sane person might term alt.weird music, Laurie Anderson (rocking a Groucho Marx/Josh Brolin look on the front cover) once again delivers an album, her first in nearly 10 years, that is, she says, "one-third politics, one-third pure music, and one-third strange dreams".

Fusing constituent parts into seamless entities is just one of Anderson's marvellous sleights of hand here, and from the gorgeous

My Right Eye

and the wry

Only an Expert

to the agitative, gender-flipping centrepiece of

Another Day in America

, Anderson rarely puts a foot or a word wrong (bar

Thinking of You

, a digital beats clanger). The really good thing is that Anderson sounds connected, wired in.

Often regarded as dispassionate and distanced, here she flows just as elegantly as most of the music, which is equal parts Twin Peaks left-of- field and thoroughly on-the- money electronica.

See laurieanderson.com.

Download tracks: My Right Eye, Another Day in America