WITH her latest album 'The Silver Globe', independent artist Jane Weaver is earning more radio play than ever before in her 20+-year career.

But Jane revealed that she faced so many obstacles during the making of the record that at one point she even applied for a job in a charity shop.

“It took three-and-a-half years to complete,” she said, “There was just so much going on around me, personally and professionally.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do – the all time low was when I applied for a job in a charity shop, and didn’t even get that.”

The turning point, Jane said, was when she went to Los Angeles with her husband – producer and label boss Andy Votel – who suggested she go into the studio with soundtrack composer David Holmes.

Said Jane: “I went in for a couple of days and realised I had to continue in that kind of studio.

“Luckily I managed to find one near my home, where the owner had a lot of weird and wonderful equipment.”

The resulting album is described as ‘part coming of age/ part cautionary tale and part romantic peon’.

Written from the optimistic vantage of a long-standing female independent artist in a desperate and out-dated industry, it features 10 conceptual pop songs about “power-plant fun-fairs, sci-fi education centres and post-apocalyptic love affairs.”

“The concept didn’t arrive until part way through making it, when I watched a strange film about astronauts who go to another planet,” Jane explained.

“It got me thinking about how different making music is now to when I started in my late teens, and how it’s going to be in the future.”

Surviving in the music industry is something Jane has achieved by creating her own independent micro-industry after the death of New Order manager Rob Gretton in 1999, who up until then had been releasing her music.

“I was at a crossroads and basically had to start again because of these tragic circumstances," she said.

Since then her synth-pop psych LPs have earned her a faithful fan base which has extended to a long discography of collaborations, often released through her own musical "Woman’s Institute" imprint Bird Records.

Jane plays at Kendal’s Brewery Arts Centre on October 1.