Jane Siberry announces rare spring 2013 UK shows

Jane Siberry

In the same time-honoured tradition of eclectic singers such as Kate Bush, k.d. lang, Tori Amos and the estranged Mary Margaret O'Hara, Canadian Jane Siberry is something of an enigma and an eccentric (in British terms, at any rate). For over thirty years the songwriter has been performing poetic left-of-centre stories and songs that have gained her an adoring audience on both sides of the Atlantic.

Perhaps her most familiar shots at the UK psyche were her major-label albums "Bound by the Beauty", featuring a few stone-wall classics such as "Everything Reminds Me of My Dog" and "The Valley", as well as the jaunty part-country part-folksy title-track, and its follow-up 1993's "When I Was a Boy", which contained a duet with k.d. lang "Calling All Angels" and the unlikely club-hit "Temple".

Since the mid '90s however, after eschewing the shackles of a major-label and setting up her own Sheeba Records, Siberry's grip on the competitive UK scene lessened and, after renaming herself 'Issa', promptly slipped out of our focus. Until now, that is. After performing oodles of intimate shows in people's homes, cottages, apartments and other private 'spaces' across the pond last year (she calls the concept, salons), the singer has earmarked slightly larger venues for her return to the UK.

Her first stop is The Pheasantry in London where she will play four nights from 5th to 8th May, before heading to Birmingham, Bury, Selby, Nottingham, Milton Keynes, Farncombe and finally Tewkesbury on 2nd June.

Tickets are on sale for all shows now and are priced from £15 to £20. Expect a career-spanning show, maybe stretching from "The Speckless Sky" to last year's "Meshach Dreams Back".

Paul Pledger