Anyone who thinks Carly Simon will tiptoe away from her career need only need listen to the opening track of “Comes in Waves,” her first album of original songs in 18 years.

Over a jaunty piano melody, Simon bulldozes into the chorus of “Howl” with the demand to “howl like the wind/roar like the river/wail like the rain/cry, shout and shiver.”

The layered, string-based instrumentation couches the defiance of her words in the song’s gripping bridge – “Where he swore, he’d never leave you/burn his promises and leave that liar” – her fortitude undiminished.

The famously private Simon, 83, recently disclosed she’s been living with Parkinson’s disease and underwent cancer surgery for basal cell carcinoma.

The dozen offerings on “Comes in Waves” (out Aug. 14) were recorded primarily at her studio on Martha’s Vineyard with close collaborators, including John Forté (who died earlier this year) and children Ben and Sally Taylor. The magnification of themes of grief, forgiveness, love, bitterness and cautious optimism represents a woman whose gifts for writing and vocal nuances are as pure as the days of “Anticipation,” “Legend in Your Own Time,” “You’re So Vain” and the criminally underappreciated “Coming Around Again.”

Carly Simon’s gift for poetic grace is undiminished at 83

While her famous ex, James Taylor (father of Sally and Ben), is the obvious target of “Maybe I Never Loved You,” a brilliant seesaw of bile and indifference (“Maybe I never loved you/but anyway, I thought I did”) and the similarly themed “The More I Look for You,” it is Simon’s delivery that matters most in her songs.

The slight hesitation in her last reading of “Maybe I never loved you/ maybe I always … will” turns the song’s intention inside out – or does it? That’s the beauty of singers such as Simon, a diminishing breed who understands that phrasing and conveyance often lend the necessary ambiguity for listeners to find their own meaning.  

Other songs, such as “Mother of Pearl,” a gorgeous ode to daughter Sally, are more direct.

Apologies (“I can see you at seven a child of divorce/how can it be that we gave you no choice”) and declarations of devotion (“You purr and you quarrel with the noisy parade … And you stay”) are stacked with personal details that shimmer with Simon’s poetic grace. But it’s hard to miss the clutch of emotion that catches in her throat as she unleashes the soulful torrent – “My girl, oh my girl” – as the song reaches its apex.

Elsewhere, this taut collection dips into mandolin and harmonica-brushed folk (“Love Has No Ending,” its lyrics based on W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening”) and hymnal splendor (“Slowly,” the song that bears the album’s title phrase).

There is also a revisiting of “Share the End,” which is as eerily culturally and politically relevant today as it was when first recorded in 1971 for Simon’s “Anticipation” album. “Here come the madmen, they’re too excited for atoning/”Burn the mosque, ” they’re shouting, “Burn it down!” she sings. Simon’s visceral vocalizing at the end is both cathartic and heartbreaking.

Carly Simon pays tribute to an old friend

Though introspection is Simon’s default setting, the sly wit that has shaded so much of her stellar catalog since 1971 (looking at you again, “You’re So Vain”) is also apparent.

“Four in the Morning,” written by her close friend, the late Judy Belushi (widow of comedian John Belushi), finally gets a recorded remembrance. Bells, keyboards and “weird little things” as noted in the album’s liner notes, inject the song with whimsical flourishes, while Judy Belushi’s vocals are nestled throughout.

Simon ends this striking, sticks-with-you album with “Do it Anyway,” a buoyant flash of hopefulness and a simple call to action: “If you think you can’t face the day/if you’re sure you can’t win the game/if you swear you can’t find a way/do it anyway.”

Sounds of her family clapping and scatting over a strummed acoustic guitar (“the usual Thanksgiving fun” as described in the album notes) edge in as the song fades, a swirl of unprompted joy and laughter the lingering memory.