The first Strange Universe tour announcement for 2027 is one we’ve been waiting over thirty years to announce. Now, we can reveal the eternally brilliant Beth Orton is visiting both Wellington and Auckland for two very special shows. Beth and her magnificent band will perform March 12th at the newly refurbished Wellington Town Hall, and March 14th in the Great Hall of the Auckland Town Hall, presented in partnership with the Auckland Arts Festival.

Ever since her debut album Trailer Park arrived three decades ago, Aotearoa has had a fascination with the songs of Beth Orton. That debut and its follow-up Central Reservation were on high rotation on student radio, music television, and home stereos of the discerning. All this time on, we still get misty-eyed at songs like She Cries Your Name, Touch Me With Your Love, Stars All Seem To Weep, and Stolen Car. Orton’s collaborations with the likes of Andrew Weatherall, William Orbit, and The Chemical Brothers ensured she would never be considered your average singer-songwriter.

An ever-evolving artist, Orton released her follow-up to 2022’s career-redefining Weather Alive with new album The Ground Above in June of this year to rapturous reception. Another tantalising twist in the tale of her sound, the self-produced record was devoured hungrily by critics, with Mojo hearing “ECM dreaminess, the jazzier end of John Martyn, and late period Talk Talk” in the new work. Meanwhile, the notoriously hard-to-impress music blog Pitchfork proclaimed, “Orton is one of the UK singer-songwriters of her generation working at the highest level right now.”

Said to be a document of “survival, integration and renewal without denial, acceptance without resignation”, The Ground Above is a powerful moment in an extraordinary career. Recorded with a cast of wildly talented musicians including multi-instrumentalists Shahzad Ismaily and Vernon Spring’s Sam Beste, drummers Chris Vatalaro (Antibalas, Radiohead), The Smile’s Tom Skinner, Portishead’s Adrian Utley, and more, the album sees Orton reaching new heights as a producer, songwriter, singer, and bandleader.  

“All the songs on the record are looking through the prism of the years from many directions at once,” Orton says. “I’m working with the unconscious, something like lucid dreaming.”

These upcoming shows, bookending an appearance at 2027’s WOMAD festival, are already set to be calendar highlights of 2027. If The Guardian’s recent review of Orton’s triumphant Brighton show is anything to go by, Aotearoa’s audiences are in for a spectacular treat.

“…at the show’s conclusion, they [the crowd] go nuts. Understandably, given that they’re in the presence of something rare: an artist in her mid-50s making the most adventurous, fascinating music of her career.” 

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