AS her appearances on BBC1’s Question Time and The Andrew Marr Show would indicate, Scottish singer and songwriter Eddi Reader is not one to hold back on political opinion.

The dust may have settled on the new order of Westminster by the time Eddi plays York Barbican on Tuesday, but today’s General Election was on her mind when What’s On called.

“It’s as it should be: Wales and Scotland and whatever else you believe to be Britain should be involved. For so long there’s been apathy; it’s good that people are engaged. Now people are more aware of Britain as a whole,” says 55-year-old Eddi. “The times around me are influencing the way I see the world so I’m picking songs about hope.”

While she enjoys the flippancy of romantic pop songs, “I just love to be authentic with a song and I always feel I’m delivering the emotion rather than the emotion delivering me,” she says. “I feel connected with everything I see in the world and connected with people in the world when I sing.

“With music, you can reveal so much about human sentiments and that’s why I don’t like language to be clever, as that hides things.”

Eddi, who first sang at family parties in her childhood days in Glasgow tenement flats, released her latest album, Vagabond, and an EP of covers, Back The Dogs, last year. This year will see the reissue of her albums for the Blanco Y Negro label and, looking forwards, she had been in the recording studio for two days at the time of this interview.

“As a post-feminist, egalitarian female I can sing about those things in today’s world, and it feels like we’re at a pivoting moment and that’s an interesting place to be,” she says.

• Eddi Reader plays York Barbican on Tuesday, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 854 2757 or yorkbarbican.co.uk

In her band will be Irish accordionist Alan Kelly, Trashcan Sinatras guitarist and singer John Douglas, bass player Kevin McGuire and guitarist Boo Hewerdine.