BETH Orton will conclude her eight-date autumn tour at Leeds Brudenell Social Club on October 16, promoting her seventh studio album, Weather Alive.
Released on September 23, this eight-track set will be the Norfolk-born singer-songwriter’s debut for her new record label, Partisan Records, home to Fontaines D.C., Laura Marling, Idles and Fela Kuti.
The expansive, fractured title track is already out as a single, accompanied by a video directed by photographer/director Eliot Lee Hazel at Big Sur on the Californian coast.
Clocking in at just over seven minutes, Weather Alive is a dark, atmospheric reintroduction to BRIT Award winner Orton as she approaches the fourth decade of a career noted for genre-defying collaborations with Chemical Brothers, Andy Weatherall, Red Snapper, William Orbit, Bert Jansch, Terry Callier and Jim O’Rourke.
The new album, her first since 2016’s Kidsticks, finds Orton in front of the recording studio glass and behind it for the first time as both artiste and producer in her London home studio.
Weather Alive is not a wholly solo album, however. Orton left the studio door wedged open to welcome The Smile and Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, Mancunian jazz saxophonist, poet and activist Alabaster dePlume, multi-instrumentalist/composer Shahzad Ismaily and The Invisible’s bassist, Tom Herbert.
Written on a battered old piano Orton saved from Camden Market, Weather Alive collates memories and experiences spanning a lifetime, her storytelling, sonically experimental songs addressing struggles and healing.
This summer, Orton, 51, has been supporting Alanis Morissette on her British and European tour, playing the Leeds AO Arena on June 24, ahead of a series of festival appearances at Latitude, Southwold, on July 23, Beautiful Days, Devon, on August 19 and Open House, Bangor, on August 21.
Tickets for Leeds Brudenell Social Club are on sale at bethortonofficial.com.
