Pop music has more than its share of loners and raffish individualists – mystics like Neil Young, misanthropes like Randy Newman, melancholics like the late Nick Drake. Joan Armatrading is a loner, too, but she's as matter-of-fact about it as she is about everything else: she just likes to be by herself. "I wanna be a big shot/And have ninety cars," she sings in the title tune of Me Myself I. "I wanna have a boyfriend/And a girl/For laughs/But only on Saturday/Six days to be alone/With just me myself I."

Armatrading's stubborn independence serves her well both as emotional armor and aesthetic fuel. Her songs often make a point of drawing lines around relationships–indeed, her most famous composition, the 1976 minor hit, "Love and Affection," laid down strict distinctions between romance and friendship. But she doesn't make such distinctions simply to keep people away. Instead, she seems determined not to allow her deepest feelings to be mistaken for facile moon-June lyricism. When she bares her soul, she wants it to matter.

If "Me Myself I" establishes the distance from which Armatrading views the rest of the world, the record's finale, "I Need You," indicates how close and tender she can be. Backed by only a moody string quartet, the singer describes, with heartrending simplicity, lying awake at night next to an imperfect stranger and thinking about a mistakenly discarded true love: "I need you/Like I needed you/The first time we kissed." Anyone who's ever withheld the mention of love at risk of seeming cold can relate to Joan Armatrading's caution and the bluntness with which her passion pours out.

Armatrading's insistence on originality characterizes her music as well as her lyrics. She's invented her own hybrid of folk, pop, jazz, rock and R&B. It's a quirky mélange of dense rhythmic textures, difficult linear melodies and stop-and-start phrasing that's as unpredictable as her singing. And she seems to have a different voice for every mood.

Me Myself I utilizes more straightforward rock & roll than any previous Armatrading outing. The new album was produced by Richard Gottehrer, who handled Blondie's debut disc and did a lot of junk-pop singles in the Sixties – quite a switch from Armatrading's former producer, the ever-classy Glyn Johns. Gottehrer's rock sound ("Born to Be Wild" guitar chords, echo-boosled vocals) comes as a shock at first, but then it's a pleasure. He makes "Me Myself I" the most accessible–i.e., commercial – number that Joan Armatrading has yet recorded. In the irresistible "Is It Tomorrow Yet," the combination of short phrases, circular guitar riffs and falsetto vocals inspires an unlikely comparison to Talking Heads.

Because they may intrigue rock & roll fans, these cuts might help Armatrading win the wider audience she's always deserved. But Me Myself I is hardly an attempt to jump on the New Wave bandwagon. Like her six earlier A&M releases (which represent a body of work as impressive as any that has emerged in the last decade) and especially like Joan Armatrading, Show Some Emotion and To the Limit, the current album is a mixed bag.

Two back-to-back tracks demonstrate the artist's relish for reggae. "Feeling in My Heart (for You)" is a light, lilting romance, while "Simon" fuses bass-heavy funk with a complex narrative about an aging mama's boy enamored of his sister-in-law. Both songs – different varieties of reggae – are delivered with as much authority as "All the Way from America," the closest thing to a typical Armatrading tune here. "All the Way from America" features the singer's roiling, folky twelve-string strumming and some expansive Duane Eddy-style electric-guitar playing. Overall, the jaunty stride of "Ma-Me-O Beach" and "When You Kisses Me" balances the exquisite intimacy of "Turn Out the Light" and "I Need You."

Joan Armatrading has the talent to be a superstar, though it's easy to understand why she isn't one. Her odd, individualistic approach to lyrics, melodies and rhythms doesn't lend itself to instant acceptance. While the materials are familiar, the connections between them are strange, mysterious and even eerie. But that's because Armatrading is one of those rare artists who's created her own emotional vocabulary, her own musical language, her own world. (RS 324)

DON SHEWEY