ALISON Moyet is revisiting her past, both on record and on a 26-date tour that arrives in York tonight for a sold-out show at the Grand Opera House.

The reason for the retrospective is the 25th anniversary of the Essex blues diva turning solo after the all-too-quick rise and fall of Yazoo, her electro-pop partnership with Vince Clarke in her early Eighties’ days as Alf.

Alison has had her say in the song selection for The Best Of Alison Moyet, a new compilation released in October. “Regardless of whether I was involved or not, they would have put a Best Of out, and obviously they would put the hits on there, but from my point of view, it was the later pieces that were of more interest, and I had more of a say in that to direct people to the mature albums,” she says.

The deluxe edition comes with an additional album, 25 Years Revisited: Alison’s new interpretation of 11 songs from her back catalogue (including Yazoo’s Situation), recorded live in session with her touring band in two and a half days.

The diverse production values that pervaded the records over the years made way for Moyet’s take on the songs from her perspective today.

“The original recordings that I didn’t like were Find Me, because it aired toward the cheesy, and then obviously there were the singles like Is This Love?, and that was more to do with the innocence of the time,” she says. “When you get older, you have different requirements of the music: you want to connect to it as a 48-year-old woman, and sometimes those naïve lyrics don’t sit with you as you are now.

“You don’t re-write the lyrics but it’s about not being so embarrassed by innocence. When you’re further away from it, you realise you can’t be where you are today without those experiences, so you emphasise different things in the song.”

As you grow older, you are more in control and vow not to be defeated by ennui,” suggests Alison. Take All Cried Out, for example.

“At 23 you don’t know what that’s like, but at 48 you do. When I started writing songs, they were all projections; now they are sung with experience, and it’s not that the projections come true, but they were written as self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Leaving school at 16 with no qualifications, but drawn to the music of Jacques Brel and Janis Joplin because “they put their real life into their songs”, Alison always felt music was her vocation. “It still does, and I still feel that I’m improving and I’m vein enough not to want to make an ass of myself,” she says. “It’s a love-hate relationship; I have felt trapped by it but at the same time I don’t fear it being taken away.

“It’s a question you ask yourself all the time: when will it stop? But I don’t worry about it because I don’t fear my age or shy away from it. I have no wish still to be 20. Many people underestimate the middle-aged because the assumption is that rock’n’roll is for the young, but in any other artform, people recognise how experience enriches your work.”

Looking to the future, Alison is writing songs for her next project, a new album that will be “kind of electronic” – bringing her full circle to her first steps in Yazoo, who re-united for a tour last year.

“I had a fantastic time. It didn’t feel like some re-hashed Stars In Their Eyes because we’d never performed the second album live,” she says.

“When we split, there was disquiet between us but I’m now more relaxed and Vince is warmer, and we were able to say that without each other and without those songs, we would never have had the careers we have.”

A live album is being mixed by Vince from several of the shows. “I’ve heard the mix and it sounds great,” says Alison. Watch this space for confirmation of a release date some time next year.

Alison Moyet plays Grand Opera House, York, tonight, supported by Alex Cornish, at 7.30pm. SOLD OUT.