Beth Orton announces winter tour

English singer-songwriter Beth Orton has announced a tour for the end of 2012 with special guest Sam Amidon. The singer will tour the UK over the months of November and December before visiting Ireland to perform a headline show in Dublin, at the Pepper Cannister Church on Mount Street Crescent.

Beth Orton will be releasing her first album in six years on October 1. Sugaring Season was recorded in Portland, Oregon with producer Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists).

For this album, Orton and Martine worked with a band made up of friends such as keyboardist Rob Burger, bassist Sebastian Steinberg, and legendary jazz drummer Brian Blade, along with guitarists Marc Ribot and Ted Barnes and folksinger Sam Amidon who is touring with Orton.

Sugaring Season is described as the result of a period of introspection and renewal: "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."

Early descriptions of the new album seem to suggest Orton has moved away from the electronic textures that dominated her early work, but she says 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, but it's definitely there and it's earthed and primal and insistent."

Tickets for Beth Orton from €22 are on sale this Friday from Ticketmaster outlets and online at www.ticketmaster.ie

Watch: Something more Beautiful by Beth Orton, taken from upcoming album Sugaring Season