Strange Universe Presents Beth Orton - Auckland & Wellington Shows Announced

A singular songwriting voice, who first shot to global fame in the mid-'90s with a landmark run of "folktronica" releases and collaborations with William Orbit, Andrew Weatherall, and The Chemical Brothers, Beth Orton is returning to Aotearoa New Zealand this coming March. The first 2027 headliner revealed for Banished Music and Strange News' seasonal Strange Universe festival (Spring Edition?), the UK superstar and her band will perform at Auckland Town Hall — presented in partnership with the Auckland Arts Festival — and the freshly revamped Wellington Town Hall, slotting an appearance at WOMAD Aotearoa in between those two headline events.

Beth Orton will be here touring her self-produced new album The Ground Above, a moonlit eight song reflection on "survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and the ongoing choice to stay — in love, in art, and in the world" — about which Pitchfork's Daniel Bromfield gushed: "Thirty-three years into her career, Beth Orton is making some of the best music of her life." Revisit our 2024 conversation with the BRIT Award winning artist HERE and prepare to pounce on tickets, going live next week...

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

Strange Universe Presents Beth Orton

Friday 12th March - Wellington Town Hall, Wellington
Sunday 14th March - The Great Hall, Auckland Town Hall, Auckland, presented in association with Auckland Arts Festival

Banished Music presale from 10am, Tuesday 27th October, register HERE
General tickets on sale from 10am, Wednesday 28th October
Tickets, presale & tour info from Banished Music

Here's Beth Orton performing 'Cigarette Curls' from her new album The Ground Above...

Press release:

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.