Carina Round is worried that she’s told me too much. And to be honest, she probably has.

“This is just puttin’ it in idiot terms,” the 24-year-old English singer/songwriter says after revealing what it was like growing up without a father. “It would take me weeks, and you’re not being paid to be my psychiatrist.”

Five weeks ago Round met her father for the first time. “He wants to be my dad,” she says, “but this time it’s on my terms. I’m just like, ‘Okay, I’m busy now. I don’t call you every day. I’m getting on with my life. Thanks.’ That’s what I said to him: ‘Thanks for making me independent. Thanks for giving me all this shit to sort out. Thanks for not giving me what I needed.’”

A few years ago she tracked him down, and he said, “Leave me alone. We have no future together.” She wrote a song about it on her first record, 2001’s The First Blood Mystery, along with material she says reflected a “confused child” still living at home with her mom.

This year’s The Disconnection, released by Interscope via Eurythmic Dave Stewart’s Weapons Of Mass Entertainment imprint, finds Round striking out on her own and surviving an oppressive romantic relationship. “I got to the point of thinking, If I’m not with this person, it’s almost like I can’t even go to the store on my own,” she says. “When you start wakin’ up in the morning thinking, I’d rather be dead in a year than in this situation, you’ve gotta make a fucking change.” She did, and the very next day “everything in the world was different.”

Round says her fear turned to joy, but don’t expect a sunny album. Recorded economically with her small touring band and some string and horn players, The Disconnection has a minor chord for every occasion. Backed by bluesy changes and dark, dissonant textures, Round furnishes tight, confident confessionals and wide-range melodies that take surprising turns. Sounds this raw and unpredictable will surely give the marketers fits. For the moment, though, the singer is savoring a kind of critical success: praise from Lou Reed, whom she met at her New York show the previous week.

“He’s sitting here telling me that I’m fucking cool,” she says. “I must be cool. It’s like God saying you’re cool.”