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It’s a long way from the Yorkshire moors to the Pauatahanui Inlet, but for singer-songwriter Ali Whitton, that journey has shaped a debut album steeped in distance, memory, landscape, and emotional reckoning.

Between the Forest and the Stars, out today, traces a life lived across continents – from rural North Yorkshire to London and Paris stages, through heartbreak, reinvention, relocation to Aotearoa New Zealand, and a songwriting pact sparked by global superstar Ed Sheeran.

The result is a deeply evocative body of work: woody, warm, and richly layered, with Whitton’s voice at the centre – vulnerable, grounded, and searching.

To celebrate the release of his album, Ali will be performing two shows at Pōneke’s Hilltop Private House, both tonight, Thursday 16th April which has sold out, resulting in a second show tomorrow, Friday 17 April. Ticket information here!

Though both his parents are British, Whitton was born in New Zealand before returning as a child to rural North Yorkshire. Growing up surrounded by hedgerows and moorland isolation, he began writing songs early, inspired not by records or radio, but by his father’s poetry.

“I just made that connection, that writing can be a way of working through something,” Whitton recalls. “So I started writing my teenage angst, secretly at first.” That instinct – songwriting as emotional processing – became the foundation for everything that followed.

After early bands in Leeds (Ali Whitton and the Broke Record Players), solo performances in London, and a formative friendship with Ed Sheeran, Whitton relocated to New Zealand in 2010. He stepped away from music for a period, retraining as a gardener at Wellington’s Botanic Gardens, before songs began returning in a new folk-leaning form under the name Lost Bird.

Reconnection with Sheeran in 2023 proved pivotal. After hearing an unfinished track, Sheeran encouraged Whitton to write a song a week for a year – an exercise that ultimately became the foundation of Between the Forest and the Stars.

Production on the album was led by acclaimed multi-instrumentalist and producer Dave Khan, who assembled a collaborative studio environment featuring Co-Producer Reb Fountain, Gus Agars, Steve Harrop, and engineer Tom Havard. Recorded at Sublime Studios in Kurow, the sessions unfolded in a remote, immersive setting that prioritised connection, intuition, and shared creative intent.

Khan says the process was built on intention and trust:

“Ali had clearly put in the mahi when he reached out to me to produce his record… Ali showed up with 52 songs to work with and a determination to work really hard. You never know what will happen when you connect a songwriter to a studio and to new musicians… We actively fostered connection with each other, with Ali’s songs and with the spaces we created in.”

Reb Fountain describes the sessions as rare and deeply generative:

“Working with Ali has been a once in a lifetime kinda gig… There’s been a whole lotta joy and play and a heap of work put into Ali’s album… I feel really fortunate to have been invited to share in it.”

Across Between the Forest and the Stars, physical and emotional geographies blur. Songs like ‘By Your Side‘, ‘Like the Forest‘, ‘Hopeful Heart‘, and ‘Quiet My Heart‘ move between vast landscapes and internal terrain – where memory, love, loss, and hope all coexist.

From locomotive folk momentum to darker, more brooding tones on tracks like ‘Forever‘, the album reflects a life in motion – both outwardly across countries and inwardly through emotional states.

These days Whitton divides his time between music and family life near the rural Pauatahanui Inlet, a landscape that echoes the solitude of his North Yorkshire upbringing. That sense of grounding – in place, memory, and relationship – runs through every track on the album.

Even the album artwork, created by illustrator Patrick Atkins, reflects this duality: shifting between dark, ambiguous landscapes that merge hemispheres – North Yorkshire hedgerows dissolving into the wild coastline of Aotearoa.

As Whitton explains, the album’s title captures its central tension:

“Between the forest and the stars references our hopes and aspirations in life and the people and places that ground us; our roots.”

Across its songs, Between the Forest and the Stars asks quiet but expansive questions about who we are, where we come from, and what we’re reaching toward – songs that feel, at times, as if they are being heard from somewhere just beyond the earth itself. The album is out now.

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