She was one of the token voices of trip-hop thanks to her association with Tricky, but the resulting success of the British-led electronic music explosion in the mid-Nineties nearly kept Martina Topley-Bird from giving attention to a debut album. By the time she finished touring with Tricky (whom she has a daughter with) behind Maxinquaye, and later, Pre-Millenium Tension, Topley-Bird was burned out. The new Anything breaks her six-year silence.

"I was deciding whether or not I was interested in investing my time and energy in doing music professionally, because I was finding it quite hard work," the raspy-piped chanteuse explains of the hiatus. "Then my brother [musician Nick Bird] approached me with this song 'Anything' and I was like, 'Let's start with that.' I made it really clear that if the situation ever evolved into anything stressful I was out of there."

Some friends -- including Belfastian producer David Holmes and Tricky -- began to stop by, and through gentle coaxing over the course of six years, helped elicit Anything. "The idea of being hooked up with people you don't know and trying to make music that's so personal was really bizarre to me," she says, "so it felt good working with [people] I have that connection with."

Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, who appears on the guitar-heavy "Need One," turned up late into the process, but he offered various forms of support. "He'd say, 'So when can I come to the studio? I'll make tea. I'll play the triangle, anything,'" she says.

With such a diverse group of accomplices, Anything travels an eclectic path, featuring whispering, acoustic love lullabies (the title track); Maxinquaye-styled, stepped-up trip-hop ("Ragga"); and PJ Harvey-like alt-rock roars ("Too Tough to Die"). And the record has found a ready audience; just days after its U.K. release (under the title Quixotic) it earned a Mercury Music Prize nomination.

"It took a couple of weeks to sink in," she says, "but [I was] pretty chuffed, really."

Having made the album her way, Topley-Bird is now contemplating getting back out on that very road that sent her running six years ago. "I really want to [tour]," she says. "I haven't done a really long tour so far for this project. That's something I was very aware of when I signed my deal -- I made it clear to my label that I didn't really want to tour a lot. But my daughter is now nine, and if it's during school holidays she can come with us."