Beth Orton announces UK dates and first album in six years (2012)
Story by Jack Foley
BETH Orton will release Sugaring Season, her first album in six years and her Anti-Records debut, on October 1, 2012.
She will also be touring the UK and Ireland in November and December this year, including a night at London’s Union Chapel (see below).
Recorded in Portland, Oregon, with producer Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists), the album bears the fruits of a period of introspection and renewal: deeply lyrical songwriting, a newfound expressivity of voice and, more than ever before, a daring synthesis of her broad musical influences into a powerfully individual artistic vision.
“I stretched myself as a singer on this record and used voices I never have before as a writer,” she explains. “A lot of the writing on this record happened in the dead of night, when spiders mend their webs, with an infant asleep in the next room… as a result, my writing became a secret again: illicit and my own.”
While Orton has shifted away from the electronic textures that dominated her early work, her music is still built upon an implicit groove, even if it emanates from her acoustic guitar rather than from a sequencer.
“It may not be a ‘dance’ beat,” she says, “but it’s definitely there and it’s earthed and primal and insistent.”
Beth Orton’s UK tour dates are (all November and December 2012):
November
25 – Leamington Spa Assembly Rooms
26 – Birmingham Glee Club
27 – Sheffield Memorial Hall
29 – Ashford Kent St. Mary’s Church
30 – Brighton St Georges Church
December
2 – Norwich Arts Centre
3 – Milton Keynes The Stables
5 – London Union Chapel
6 – Nottingham Rescue Rooms
7 – Bristol Thekla
9 – Manchester RHCM
10 – Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
11 – Cardiff Glee Club
13 – Glasgow Oran Mor
14 – Dublin (IE) Pepper Canister Church
Tickets are £22.50 (London) and £19.50 and are on sale now.