"Why would we need to do Moloko again?"

"I’ve had two children, been in two relationships, had ups and downs and ups again, made an EP singin’ in Italian, gone on a few holidays, and generally lived a bit of life,” says the 41-year-old, in her soft Irish lilt, of the time it’s taken to get her third solo album, Hairless Toys, recorded and released. “It feels like I closed my eyes, and eight years’ve gone by.” 

Murphy’s six-song Italian EP, last year’s Mi Senti, came from wanting to “do something beautiful with my boyfriend,” producer Sebastiano Properzi, the father of her second child, Tadhg. It was inspiring. “I knew the time was right for me to sit down and make a record. I could feel it calling me.” 

Returning to work with old Moloko collaborator Eddy Stevens, inspiration ran wild. In fact they recorded enough material for two LPs. “The magic of the ol’ music industry now is that you don’t have to panic when you’ve got thirty-five songs, now.” After eight years away, Murphy’s discovering how much has changed. “I’ve only just embraced the social media aspect of things. You can essentially handle your own marketing without some marketing scientist telling you to shut up because you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s nice to be able to just get on with it without having that feeling of some paternal figure looking over your shoulder.”

“I promised EMI I was going to make them a pop record, and for some reason they believed me.”

Murphy experienced that feeling when she first went solo, especially once her brilliant debut, 2003’s Matthew Herbert-produced Ruby Blue, was deemed a commercial flop. “In Moloko — because we were in Sheffield, and Mark’s quite a scary bloke — people just left us alone, and I carried that feeling into Ruby Blue. They probably thought that now this young lass had gotten rid of that gruff Northern geezer that they’d just be able to tell me what to do. But there was never any way I was going to do that — I can dig my heels in if I feel there’s a good reason for it — and I thought that it’d be fine. And obviously it wasn’t fine, because I got dropped.”

2007’s glitzy, housey Overpowered was her attempt at a commercial crossover. “I promised EMI I was going to make them a pop record, and for some reason they believed me.” Its failing to turn her into the next Kylie was another reason Murphy “dropped out” for a while. Now the revitalised, idiosyncratic Hairless Toys arrives feeling both fresh and classic, Uninvited Guest sounding most Moloko-esque.

Speaking of which, as one of the few successful acts to resist the reunion-tour circuit, will Moloko ever grace the stage together again? “Not any time soon,” Murphy admits. “I really do enjoy my solo career… Why would we need to do Moloko again? We ought to just leave that where it was.”