SARAH Cracknell, one third of peerless British electronic pop artists Saint Etienne, will play Leeds City Varieties Music Hall on June 21 on the closing night of her five-date tour.

The shows coincide with this week's release of her second solo album, Red Kite, nearly two decades since her first, Lipslide, in 1997. Whereas the debut was all blue-eyed pop, not far from Saint Etienne's glacial sheen, the belated pastoral follow-up was recorded last year in a winter fortnight in a makeshift studio in the Oxfordshire countryside, where 48-year-old Sarah and her family live.

The resulting warm breeze of a record is a love letter to nature and the formative music of youth, especially Marianne Faithfull and the Sixties sirens, written primarily in collaboration with Welsh producer Carwyn Ellis, from Coloroma, who will be part of a six-strong line-up on Sunday.

Why was there such a long gap between solo projects, Sarah? "It's always about when there's a natural gap in Saint Etienne activity to be honest, but we're always doing something, even if it might not always look that way, but we're always busy, maybe doing something like a film soundtrack or touring."

Nevertheless, the chance to make Red Kite finally beckoned. "A couple of songs had been lurking for a year and the rest were written at the time of the album," says Sarah. "It's very easy to spot the difference with the first record because this one is pastoral rather than electronic; not that we've not done pastoral songs in Saint Etienne, just less so.

"Lyrically, it's quite cinematic storytelling. I've been never been good at that autobiographical writing, and even if there are such details, it's probably shrouded in mystery and other characters."

Did you not keep a diary in younger days, Sarah? "I did, but only a little bit; I was too busy going out having fun," she says. Rather than through observation, her new songs emerge through feelings. "A lot of them I tended to start with atmosphere and a location, or an emotion, and then build characters around it, if there are characters.

"I tend to take influences from maybe a novel I'm reading that day or what I can see around me that day, or sometimes people will give me an idea, like my nephew, who's 23/24. He writes music and he sent me loads of ideas, but I kept rejecting them, evil Aunty Sarah! But then he sent one that I really liked, and I'd also been reading Patti Boyd's autobiography, and for some reason, the two connected for the song Underneath The Stars."

Among the guest contributors to Red Kite is Manic Street Preachers' Nicky Wire on Nothing Left To Talk About. "I was searching for a certain type of voice and he's definitely got it because it's a break-up song that sounded shirty and negative," says Sarah. "But he has such charm in his voice and such a twinkle, and the song needed that to stop it being stroppy.

"We'd been label mates for a time, when we both liked wearing feather boas, and I was really pleased he said 'yes', because I don't know where I would have gone next."

On Sunday, Sarah will air songs from both Cracknell albums, possibly a sprinkling of Saint Etienne numbers too, and definitely a cover or two. "I won't say more," she says. "I want them to be a surprise".

Sarah Cracknell, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, Sunday, June 21, 7.30pm, supported by Sacramento's Sea Of Bees. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or cityvarieties.co.uk