Hersh dodges the question entirely by doing her own oblique, downbeat, singer-songwriter in the desert-type-thing, telling current pop/rock events to go fuck themselves, and pleasing herself.

But is she pleased? This record is so personal, so plainly for her, it's difficult to find entry points in: but when we do, we find her spirited, yes, but lonely, betrayed, bitter. Her voice - full-blooded as a jilted lover's, as arresting as a suddenly produced bright yellow gun - sounds older, chalkier than usual, torn, as if she's been on forty a day - or, more likely, remonstrating endlessly with her ghosts again.

"How many times can you get fucked?" she murmurs on 'William's Cut'. "I am wiped," she spits on 'Your Dirty Answer,' her voice straining and bolting like a colt: "I am so tired." And later, she asks herself: "How'd I trust a band who'd leave me one by one?"

Still, faced with the daily soul-death of reaching for the stars with S Club 7, Hersh's bleak skies, somehow, have never been so necessary.