THEA Gilmore’s new album Ghosts & Graffiti should not be mistaken for a Greatest Hits set, a Best Of compilation or a Duets project, but it is a refresher course and a fresh beginning too.

Greatest hits?

“No. I’ve technically had two top-40 hits, and one of them isn’t even on there. I’m not fundamentally what you’d call a single-orientated artist,” says Thea, who plays a sold-out Pocklington Arts Centre on Tuesday at 8pm.

Best Of?

“No. Were I ever to attempt such a notion it would probably not include You’re The Radio whilst overlooking The Lower Road and See If They Applaud,” the Oxford-born singer-songwriter reveals.

And it “most definitely isn’t” a duets album, she insists, despite the presence of I Am Kloot’s Johnny Bramwell, Billy Bragg, The Waterboys’ Mike Scott, Salford punk performance poet John Cooper Clarke, Joan As Policewoman, King Creosote and Joan Baez on the new recordings.

Let Thea define Ghosts & Graffiti for herself.

“People kept asking me about a Best of, but to me that’s a death knell to a career, and that’s not the case here. Instead this is me attempting to look forward and backwards at the same time, in that every time someone asked me about it, it was a bit of a kick to go back and listen to my earlier albums, as I don’t really do that but just play those songs live,” she says.

“I still love a lot of them, but I’ve stopped seeing the original versions as definitive. I wanted the chance to breathe some new life into them.”

Thea, 35, has been making albums since she was 18. “I went back and listened to them again from when I was young; they made me think, ‘gosh, I really like that’ or ‘oh God, did I really sound like that?’.”

The subsequent selection process was “so difficult”, says Thea.

“There were 14 albums to choose from, which is mad when you think about it. I could have made three different albums and I still wonder if I got the selection right. There’ll be a few wars of words, I’m sure, among people who’ve been following my music for a long time.”

Nevertheless, having chosen the songs for the “oral photo album” of her career so far, Thea knew that some would suit a straight re-recording, but others would require input from “people who’ve been influential on my music and the way I make it”.

“At several points in my career, I’ve been inspired by meeting musicians, who have come into my life and made great suggestions,” she says. “Some are close friends, some are acquaintances that I’ve worked with, but all of whom I admire.”

Take Joan Baez, for example, who features on Inch By Inch, one of six new songs on Ghosts & Graffiti. “I toured with Joan in 2004 and we’ve met up pretty much every time she comes over,” says Thea. “We met in London and she said ‘of course I’ll do the song’. It was like I’d asked her to make a cup of tea.”

Thea mentioned in passing how she wished she could write songs of the calibre of the guests on her album, but one returned the compliment: I Am Kloot’s Johnny Bramwell, in praise of Razor Valentine. “He’s a close friend and lives only a town away from me [Thea’s home is in Nantwich, Cheshire]. He’s so undervalued; he doesn’t make a big deal of his talent, but as he stood in the studio, hearing that song, he said, ‘Yeah, I would have liked to have written that one’.”

As she reflects on her 15th album and the steady upward trajectory of her career, Thea says: “I am very, very, very proud of what I’ve done. It’s an honour but I’ve worked like a dog to get where I am. So many people start but then stop and do something else but I am so passionate in all I do.”

• Thea Gilmore’s Ghosts & Graffiti is out on Monday on Fullfill Records.