One of the strangest things about the hell that is known as the music industry is the way people who are primarily interested in commerce are convinced they know what’s best for those in love with making art.

Natalie Prass ran up against that reality when working on a full-length follow-up for her stunning self-titled debut from 2015. When she submitted the songs that would eventually become her sophomore album, The Future and the Past, the reaction was less than enthusiastic.

“Basically, I angered the label that I was on at the time so much that they dropped me,” Prass says with a wry laugh, on the line from her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. “Whatever. It was a short relationship and definitely mutual—I didn’t think they were the right fit for me. I’d tried to get them to come down to Richmond to see how we work, and meet all of my friends that I love working with so much. They didn’t come down. And then when I sent them the finished product nobody contacted me for a month. No one said thank you or anything. I was so upset, so mad.”

In some ways, Prass—who comes across as more perplexed than pissed off—should have been prepared. During the writing process her label had also encouraged her to spend time with professional songwriters in L.A., the goal presumably to get mainstream airplay. Considering that Natalie Prass was the work of someone drawing on angelic chamber pop, art-school jazz, and springtime-in-Paris pop, that stint didn’t exactly lead to golden memories.

It did, however, leave an exasperated-by-the-process Prass well aware of what she wanted The Future and the Past to be, namely one of the smartest and most adventurous albums of the year. Prass had initially intended to make a record about exiting a shitty relationship, but then Donald Trump happened. To focus on herself suddenly seemed pointless, considering that the U.S. was about to become one of the most politically and morally divided countries on the planet.

“We were scheduled to do pretty much a completely different record in December of 2016,” Prass says. “I was already feeling a little strange about recording that record because the [presidential] campaign was so horrific. And I was already thinking ‘Maybe I should be talking about different things.’ ”

When Clinton lost, Prass curled up in bed for a while too traumatized to function, and then got busy trying to make the world a better place with The Future and the Past. The record is political right from the opening track, the singer lighting out for Funkytown, USA with the bouncy “Oh My”, where she asks “I can’t believe the things I hear/Oh, what is truth and what is fear?/Oh, what is lying to a cheat?/And what is freedom for the free?”

On the 11 tracks that follow, Prass covers a lot of issues, from the need for women to stick together in a hostile America to the fact that everyone seems to have a #MeToo story.

Just as impressive as her determination to make a difference is her unwillingness to play by anyone’s rules but her own. The Future and the Past is a record where sepia-toned strings rise up out of nowhere, taking “Hot for the Mountain” from avant-pop ballad to retro-flavoured heaven. And where “Ship Go Down” starts out like Sunday-morning jazz before unleashing acid-king guitar squalls and stuttering drum violence.

For all the chances that it takes, The Future and the Past is certainly accessible enough for those who swim just outside the mainstream. But in any event, fuck the bean counters of the world; Prass has made a record for those who live for art.

“I don’t have any education of music beyond the year 2000,” Prass says with a laugh. “I’m such an old soul, and I can’t help but be blatant about where my tastes come from, so I remember being in Los Angeles during that writing session, and then going ‘What am I doing out here?’ Sometimes, it really hurts.”

Natalie Prass plays the Fox Cabaret on Tuesday (September 25).