HAVING started a world tour at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall back in January, KD Lang is steadily making her way back to Scotland.
This week sees the Canadian in Oxford, Sheffield and Gateshead, but Edinburgh fans have only to wait until Wednesday to hear the awesome voice that has won her such wildly adulatory praise.
It catapulted her to fame in 1987 when Roy Orbison asked
her to record his hit Crying in duet, and has been described since as simply "the most heavenly voice on earth".
The praise has been getting louder with the release of Watershed, Lang's latest album and the inspiration for the tour that brings her to the Capital.
The Sunday Times called it a "masterpiece", while Q Magazine enthused that it was "the best thing she's done since 1992's Ingénue".
Watershed is Lang's first collection of original songs since Invincible Summer was released back in 2000. It is also the first album she has produced herself in a 25-year career, which is part of the self-renewal that the title is meant to capture.
At 47, firmly established as a monument on the musical landscape (she was recently granted a star on Canada's Walk of Fame) and lesbian poster-girl, Lang has described the album as "a reassessment of my relationship to the world and to myself".
It echoes the many genres her work has drawn on - jazz, country, torch, Brazilian - but is also a creative leap forward.
In keeping with the theme of renewal, she performs the songs with a brand new band, having relinquished faithfuls Greg Leisz, Teddy Borowiecki and David Piltch to studio commitments.
But the voice will be the same as ever.
KD Lang, Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, Wednesday, 7pm, £28.50-31.50, 0131 529 6000The full article contains 303 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
