Aiha Higurashi pauses, her brow furrows slightly, and she purses her lips. Her eyes have the sharp, scrutinizing focus of someone who doesn't want to miss a single cue or nuance of meaning in her surroundings. There's a wariness about her, and even in the simple matter of scratching her chin, it's her middle finger she extends to perform the task.

"Half of me is still a 17-year-old girl and half of me is 43 or whatever," Higurashi says. "But I'm still a little girl, struggling all the time, with music, with other people, with society. And I love that part, but it's a mess."

Higurashi's new album, her first under the name Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her since 2001's "Future or No Future," is titled "Eternal Adolescence" and in lines like, "Every time I fight with you/You never try to fight me back," (from "Kiss and Make Up") there's a sense that her creativity somehow needs the constant conflict her inner stroppy teenager brings.