Katie Spencer: 'Sometimes I can be in a really beautiful place and that’s when it hits me'

“It’s interesting,” she says of her third LP, What Love Is, “because I didn’t set out to write an album that had a central theme to it. I was just touring and life was happening, and every so often I’d react to whatever was going on in my life in a song. Suddenly I had a collection of songs that were exploring love in different forms, some in positive ways, others not so much.

“I think that’s one of the major consequences of touring because I travel around a lot on my own largely, I did most of the touring over the last three years solo, and sometimes I can be in a really beautiful place and that’s when it hits me that I’d love to be sharing this with someone who I love.”

Not that Spencer feels homesick often – “It’s such an amazing privilege to be able to do this, and it’s probably my favourite part of being a full-time musician,” she says – but simply she wished she “had someone special” accompanying her.

The 10 songs on What Love Is were “all written in different places round and about”, and betray Spencer’s fondness for the warm jazz chords favoured by Joni Mitchell and Joan Armatrading. “I love those really sumptuous-sounding records,” she says. “Some of the Joan Armatrading stuff it’s beautifully captured, and also sonically and musically very wide-open but also close and intimate at the same time.

“I love that sort of balance, when you can have that huge sonic and musical depth in records like Joni Mitchell and Joan Armatrading and yet it feels like the musician or the songwriter is sitting opposite you and playing music just for you.”

The first song she wrote for the album was Goodbye, which details the end of a relationship. It felt, she says, like the beginning a new chapter. “Previously I’ve written a lot of songs about landscapes and people and places, this record feels quite different. I wrote Goodbye because previously I’d written a lot of songs about the same subject and the same scenario that happened in my life many years ago, and I wanted to draw a line under that and say, OK, this is the last song that you’re going to write about this and we’re going to move on, and it worked, which is great.

“Definitely it was written intentionally at the time about stepping out of that and moving into something new. I wasn’t aware that I would step so far away but it’s been a great process and I’ve ended up making the music I’ve always wanted to make. That’s not to say I’m not pleased with the albums I’ve done previously, but it’s nice to move into a slightly different territory with this one.”

Perhaps the most personal song of all is It Was Then That I Knew Love, in which Spencer addresses adoption. “That is probably the most bare, most emotional song on the album, and it’s one that I really enjoy playing live. Having those experiences and sharing those experiences with people in a live context really encouraged me to put it on the record,” she says. “It’s quite a daunting thing to be so wide open about something so personal.

“It’s always a contant in my life but sometimes it feels more poignant, I suppose, and I’ve been going through a period where that’s been happening and playing that song live and seeing the trust that it brings between myself and the audience. It’s a real privilege when folks come over to me who have been impacted by the song and have some personal connection with adoption or associated situations and they share their stories with me, it feels really special. That experience made me think I should really put it on the record.”

Cold Stone is a homage to Spencer’s early folk guitar-playing heroes such as John Martyn and John Abercrombie. “I remember discovering John Martyn in the very early days,” she says. “Very early on it was musicians like Bert Jansch and Jackson C Frank, that very straight-up finger-style approach that really switched me onto it, but then from that I found people like John Martyn who blended that acoustic sound with electronics and that really excited me, I’d not heard anything like it before.

“Then from him I began discovering all of these amazing jazz players like Alf Terje Hana and John Abercrombie. One of my favourite records is Timeless by John Abercrombie, when I first Matt Ingram, who produced the album, I took him a mixtape and definitely all of those folks were on there and hopefully you can hear some of the influences because I love that music.”

What Love Is is out now. Katie Spencer plays at Dark Woods Coffee, Huddersfield on October 5; Cafe #9, Sheffield on October 6; Bloomfield Square, Otley on October 11; The Polar Bear, Hull on October 19. https://www.katiespencer.net/