SINGER Juliet Turner is set to cause a storm when she performs songs from her new album Season of the Hurricane in Southampton next week.

The rising star, who begins her UK tour at The Brook on Sunday, April 18, already boasts some impressive credentials, having supported Joan Armatrading on tour last year and shared the stage with Bob Geldof on the Celtic Connections tour.

Her distinctive, melodic songs - their lyrics peppered with references to vampires, premonitions, smoke and mirrors, no-strings sexual encounters and Elvis rising from the dead - have recently caught the attention of Radio 2 DJ Terry Wogan, who has been playing Everything Beautiful Is Burning from Juliet's second album on his breakfast show.

As a result, sales of the album Burn the Black Suit have shot up to more than 15,000 in the UK alone.

Named Best Contemporary Artist at the Irish World Awards 2004, Juliet grew up in the tiny village of Tummery in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, where she began singing at school and in church.

She only took her singing seriously in 1993 when she went to university in Dublin and began listening to country artists such as Dolly Parton and Hank Williams.

"My parents were country music fans," she said. "I don't like music that's not melodic, there has to be a hook somewhere. Country music is very melodic. There's a lot of humour in the lyrics, really black lyrics."

Juliet's first public performances, with the guitar her parents had bought for her when she was 15, were as a covers artist in a Dublin club, but she was soon encouraged to begin writing her own material.

She recorded her acoustic debut album Let's Hear It For Pizza in 1996 during a university exchange to Stratchclyde.

For tickets and information, call The Brook on 023 8055 5366.