- If there’s a constant in the work of Laura Imbruglia, it is - very obviously - her viciously self-deprecating humor. This was rather wryly confirmed by the inclusion of a little promo gimmick with her latest album, What A Treat: roughly half the pieces of a jigsaw of the album’s cover art - what a treat, ay?

It’s stated more explicitly on the album’s second cut Harsh Dylan Songs. Diginity abandonded me long ago / It took off with self-respect. She might be riffing on Dylan, but she’s definitely made self-debasement her own thing. Songs of depression, misanthropy, alcoholism and destructive love make this album, much like all of her work, a stream of self-loathing that would give The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt a run for his money. Actually, they’d make a good couple, but, no wait, he’s gay... in fact yeah, that’s about their speed; at least they could get a couple of really dark songs off the back of the hideous break-up.

Again, like Merritt, Imbruglia has an ear for a pop song and likes to play her bitter lyricism off against that pop sweetness. That’s certainly as evident on Imbruglia’s third full-length as her second. Unlike her first, self-titled effort which, from a foundation of ambitious art-rock went all sorts of places, 2010’s The Lighter Side Of... couched its tart observations in easy-going folk-country.

What A Treat is less of a stylistic leap, although certainly still an evolution of her sound, retaining the country, singer-songwriter stylings but linking them to 50s rock’n’roll and plenty of steel guitar. It’s slightly less obvious on the melancholy but ballsy rocking of the now ancient advance Why’d You Have To Kiss Me So Hard? You’ll get the feel from the more recent Awoooh! with it’s thoroughly upbeat jive counterweighted by a wolf-girl’s sad little song of forlorn love. It’s a conceit that’s repeated effectively on the appropriately Beach Boys-esque, alcohol-dependent Straight To The Bar or the anti-ex-lover-rant of Ain’t Done Yet. There’s other things going on though, like when the sadness and style fit hand-in-glove on slow country moaners such as Limerance or the strangely disturbing group-effort, Intervention. I couldn’t really make out the lyrics behind the psychedelic rock swirl of Incest, (I reckon I might be glad about that), and we finish on the album’s title track, a slow-country-croon loaded with buckshot for another ex-lover, but it even-handedly saves the last barrel - of course - for Laura herself.

Laura Imbruglia, with her sweet country-rocking and pen full of bile remains a unique fixture on the Australian scene. In the gentle development of her sound and the consistency of the emotional horror she hides away in it, she’s a bit like an itchy, possibly infected cut: it’s difficult not to want to focus your attention there and see what's going on.

- Chris Cobcroft.