 |
|
| . |
| > Rollingstone Dec 24 1998 |
| Who: A true singer-songwriter in that she
excels at both roles, Orton weaves English folk, confessional songwriting
and high-tech arrangements into a modern rhythmic approach. She also
recorded collaborations with the Chemical Brothers and Chicago soul singer
Terry Callier. Her second album Central Reservation, is due in early 1999.
Hometown: London Just Do It: "My friends have got this expression - 'throwing your hat over the wall,'" says Orton, 27. "It's from an Irish story: When they were kids, if they got to a wall too high to climb, they'd throw their hats over, so they'd have to climb to get their hats back. I quite like that, throwin' my hat over the wall." Secret Weapon: A Hoover vacuum. "I never used to sing in public, but I always used to sing to the Hoover," she says. "I sing really well to a drone. I'd be singing at the top of my voice because no one could hear me."
|
| > Select Magazine 1998 |
| Single of the Month - Stolen Car
"I'm not very technically minded" - Beth Orton on cinnamon-flavoured lyrics and backwards guitar playing. A seasonally fitting first choice of single from Beth's forthcoming 'Central Reservation' album, this seems almost custom designed as a soundtrack for the long, freezing, ice-coated weeks ahead. Potential Raymond Briggs moods are underlined by the air of Child's nightmare, focusing on a sinister male character with "fingers like fuses" and "cinnamon eyes". It still has the folky tinge familiar from Beth's first debut album (sic), 1997's 'Trailer Park', but it's rescued from the finger-in-the-ear traditionalism by the astonishing guitar from Ben Harper, a mad flanging sound soaring all over the place like a Ford Capri veering out of control. And as DLT might say, it's a bit of a grower - not as immediate as 'She Calls Your Name' (sic), but it's impossible not to become wrapped up in the song's textures, especially when you gradually spot things like a buried piano line playing out of key, adding just a tad more menace. The only problem is that it's going to sound jarringly out of place in these evil B*Witched-filled days. Which may be the point. SO BETH, WHAT ARE YOU UP TO AT THE MOMENT? - "Well, I just got back from Hawaii, which I loved. I'm in LA at the moment, holidaying and just sorting out a few things before the album's launched and the tour in March. It's so warm out here - it's nice to be away from cold old England." SO WHAT EXACTLY DOES "FINGERS LIKE FUSES" MEAN? - "It's hard to explain - I usually like to keep the meanings of the things open. The way I write, words can means lots of different things. But here I was trying to get over the idea of electricity, maybe sexual electricity. The guy's a baddie, and I wanted to get over the idea of his danger." WHAT ABOUT THE "HIS EYES WERE CINNAMON" BIT? - "That means his eyes are like sweeties, that they're good enough to eat." WAS IT DIFFICULT TO RECORD THE HENDRIX-ESQUE GUITAR PART? - "Well, Ben Harper is just amazing. He's got this amazing ability to create his own sound. It sounds like it's done backwards. I haven't got a clue how it was treated, though - I'm not very technically minded"
|
| > The Sunday Times, Culture Section Feb 1999 |
| It was a weird introduction. Tall and
rakishly thin, Beth Orton stood gazing intently into a full-length mirror,
smoothing her new green skirt over barely detectable hips. She did this
for so long that I began to wonder whether it was some kind of
performance, or whether she is just heroically unselfconscious. This
confusion was compounded by the fact that, a few minutes before, when her
slick, black record-company car had pulled up at the kerb, I’d waited
for her to get out, rather than pretending I hadn’t seen her and
continuing up the stairs her frosty demeanor was giving me the vague
feeling that I hadn’t yet been forgiven for spoiling her entrance.
Could this have been true? It’s hard to tell with Orton. The day after our interview, her manager called to politely request that I refrain from writing about something which Orton told him she had recklessly discussed. The only thing was that I hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was talking about. Her world is as disorientating and unpredictable as the fractured songs which help make her one of the most distinctive English Pop voices since fashionable 1960s icon Nick Drake. Now 28 and about to release on March 8 an extraordinary second album, Central Reservation, she is like a sullen teenager one moment, a vivacious ball of enthusiasm the next. In these latter moments, you could forgive her anything. To be honest, I’m still struggling to make sense of her. As indeed, until recently, was she: for Orton’s career is not as other careers. She was nearing her twenties when, encouraged by then boyfriend and now Madonna/Blur producer William Orbit - who was allegedly drawn to her speaking voice when they met at a club - she first picked up a guitar and learnt to play. A few years later, her debut-album would be kicking up critical storm, culminating in its being nominated for the Mercury Muse Prize in 1997. Though accessible, Trailer Park was a deceptively strange record, with an organic sound that was frequently categorised as folk, though nippy rhythms betrayed the fact that her first social experience of music was at raves in the late 1980s. She Cries Your Name, a song which was as elusive and amorphous as a cloud, but impossible to forget once heard, became one of that year’s most unexpected hit singles. You could say that Beth Orton has been uncommonly lucky, but the music seems to come from what went on prior to success, and that could hardly be described in those terms. We won’t linger here. At the risk of reducing a lift to a list, hers runs as follows, Parents separate when she is eight. Father dies suddenly of a heart attack when she is 11. Viewed as a freak at school in Norwich, Orton is picked on; by the age of 13, she has stopped going, started drinking and hanging out in nightclubs. At 14 her mother decides that they will start afresh in London. On Christmas Eve five years later, that same mother is taken ill and dies a week later of breast cancer. She and her brothers inherit a house they have no idea of how to run and she has a breakdown. Asked how she got through it, she says simply: "Music. Music saved me." She worries that people have a preconception of her as downtrodden and tragic, which she manifestly is not. Part of Orton’s appeal is her apparent unaffectedness, which is probably born of the fact that she never expected to be here, grinning ironically at the idea of herself as a pop star. She still regards her music as a precious gift that might easily have gone undiscovered and describes the process of having made her second album in terms that make mountain climbing and childbirth seem like child’s play. "I was very driven while making it," she says. "I wasn’t very logical, I was extremely instinctual and when something wasn’t working, I had to try it another way. With the first album, I didn’t get that kind of chance." She maintains that, for the most part, her instincts proved right ("Sometimes I panicked unduly; but not often"), and the passionate demo version of the solo acoustic ballad, "Feel To Believe", which was recorded in her friend’s shed and preferred to lusher later readings, tends to back her up, As it turns out, she needed this faith, because the success of Trailer Park had persuaded elements within her record company that they had stumbled across a new Sheryl Crow or Alanis Morissette. Listening to Orton detail her first producer’s attempts to push her in that direction ‘can make you feel like laughing, crying, joining a monastery and starting a revolution in the space of a few sentences, Ultimately, it rekindles your faith in something remarkably like artistic trash. "I’ve realised that I can’t deny my own instinct. I get physically ill if I ignore it. Two days we were in rehearsal with that producer. I just burst into tears, saying, ‘I don’t want to do this’. We sat down in the other room and I just started being . . . clear. And honest. The songs were sounding like someone else. It wasn’t like me. It was like taking all my songs and making them into something else." Orton’s incredulousness at this very idea is a powerful rebuke to the bean-counters who run the record industry, and from that moment on, she knew she had the strength to do what needed to be done. What needed to be done was Central Reservation, a quantum leap forward from Trailer Park, infectious though that record was. The dominant theme is deliverance, there being lots of lines like: "The soul and the spirit each have got their limit/ And I can’t waste another second living in Hell, like it’s some kind of Heaven" (Feel to Believe) and "What are regrets? Just lessons we haven’t learnt yet" (Sweetest Decline). The title track begins: "I can still smell you on my fingers and taste you on my breath" a touching paean to Greek cuisine, we will assume. They won’t be referring to her, however affectionately, as "the come-down queen" any more. More striking still is the confidence Orton’s band has acquired through the past two years of touring. The first single, Stolen Car, which features some wicked guitar playing from the American Ben Harper. is as panoramic as rock songs come, while the reprise of the title track at the end of the record, which was co-produced by Everything But the Girl’s Ben Watt, becomes a rousing House anthem. Between these poles lies a richer vein of music and emotion than even fans of that feted first record might have hoped for. Who knows where Beth Orton might go from hue?
|
| > Select Magazine album review April 1999 |
|
Guests on Ms. Orton’s second album include Ben Harper on Guitar, Doctor John on Piano, legendary folk-soulster Terry Callier with additional vocals, plus Ben Watt contributing the record’s only electronic beats – on "Stars All Seem to Weep" and a remix of the title track. It’s not really Beth’s fault that she’s become a lifestyle accessory to sit alongside French Connection’s tasteful beiges and greys and Living Etc magazine’s tips on feng shui – the songstress of choice with couples for whom staying in is the new going out. But there’s Middle Youth and there’s Middle Aged. If you thought "Trailer Park" was tasteful in the extreme be aware that, compared to "Central Reservation", it’s pure aural carnage. Much of it even betters Bernard Butler in the nouvelle-antique pastoral soul stakes. Red-herring opener "Stolen Car", with it’s slow burning Ben Harper guitar arabesques, suggests distantly gathering storm fronts. But we have to wait until track nine for the album to return to its potency. Before that there’s "Sweetest Decline" with it’s jazzy piano trills courtesy of Dr John and a lush orchestra sounding like an unusually sunny latter-day Van Morrison. By the time you reach "So Much More", even Radio 2 programmers might be getting fidgety. "Stars All Seem to Weep" may be the album’s only beat-driven track, but it still travels from roughly nowhere to nowhere. Something more engaging does arrive when the mellifluous, endlessly pleasant drift meets the last few stripped-down numbers. Here at last Orton matches the intensity of her allotted Drake-Nyro-Mitchell reference points. "Blood Red River" may be none-more-Nick, but its claustrophobic grace is genuinely haunting. The slighter "Devil Song" basically follows suit, before the proud, life affirming closer, "Feel to Believe". Featuring just Beth and acoustic guitar, it has all the sprightly immediacy of "Trailer Park" tracks like "Live As We Dream". Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong in producing unashamedly pretty music – as a lineage that stretches from The Carpenters through to Air and Mercury Rev demonstrates. But paradoxically enough, it seems that a certain brutishness can be equally important. Maybe "Central Reservation" sees Beth demonstrating just too much good taste. ***/***** - Steve Lowe
|
| > NME album review 13 Mar 1999 |
| Beth Orton, in a very real sense the tallest
singer-songwriter of her generation, has been rescued from what might have
been an obscure fate rattling around the Anglian country and folk circuit
by her unique associations with the dance world.
She's collaborated with, among others, Red Snapper and the Chemical Brothers on "Dig Your Own Hole". She could be touted as the missing link between the brutal, faceless modernism of Techno and the more ancient, winsome introspection of the songstress. And so there's a sequencer-driven remix of the title track here by Everything But The Girl's Ben Watt, who's learned a trick or two from the job Todd Terry did on "MIssing", while "Stars All Seem to Weep" here is boosted by a low level dose of trip-hop adrenalin. Yet all this is arguably the least interesting thing about Beth Orton. What's most compelling about "Central Reservation" is that it picks up a songwriting tradition harking back to the days of Tim Buckley, Terry Callier (who guests here on "Pass in Time") and, especially, John Martyn, whose "I Don't Wannt Know 'Bout Evil" Beth Orton once covered. All of these used jazz, keyboards and strong-laden arrangements to illustrate the sensual, emotional to-and-fro of their songs, making music that was more than sixth-form love poetry set to wooden acoustic accompaniments. Like them, Beth Orton makes music that dissolves in its own fluids, music to dissolve into rather than not along to. This is especially true of "Couldn't Cause Me Harm" and "So Much More", in which Orton's curiously Gaelic vowels, flat-sided and sharp-edged by turns, slither and backstroke through slow-moving streams of guitar, vibes, languid strings and tactile percussion, lyrics melting in a river of aching bliss. Beth Orton is happiest and best in the hazy divide where words give way to the moans and oozing purrs which more eloquently say the unsayable about love and estrangement. She's less convincing delivering epigrams like "Regrets are lessons we haven't learned yet" as on the disappointingly Crystal Gayle-esque "Sweetest Decline", which features Dr John ticking the ivories. Not that Orton has to overburden her songs with instrumentation to connect. The unremixed version of the title track is a relatively stark dialogue between electric and acoustic guitars and there's nothing softcore or moony about its most jarringly effective line, "I can still smell you on my fingers and smell you on my breath". And it's not all sticky-sweet harmony, as the perturbing, distantly rocky opener, "Stolen Car" illustrates. If she's got a mission statement it's "Feel to Believe", in which she pointedly rejects platitudes and false promises. The same could be said of this album. It's more than just words, it's physical. Feel it and believe it. (8/10) - David Stubbs |
| > Inkblot Magazine 1999 |
| Praise You, by Pierre Stefanos
There is a certain coincidental irony in the title of Beth Orton's first solo single, "She Cries Your Name." No, she doesn't actually cry out any particular names, but after one listen to the song, people flocked to her like a siren. Orton began collecting fans that were so mad for her music, they arguably made Tori Amos fans look like slackers. A bit skeptical? Try watching Beth Orton's video for "Central Reservation." It's all you need to understand the influence her music has on people. More upbeat in tone and tempo than the majority of songs in her catalogue, a happy Orton walks down an urban street, big grin on her face, singing the title track of her second album. Seeing the way that she infects the random people in her video with that same joy, literally cloaking them in the shirt off her back, is the best way to portray the effect that Beth has on her fans. She's definitely affected Ink Blot reader Dorothy Faines: "Beth Orton soothes me like no one else can. She's down-to-earth enough to make you feel like you have a friend singing to you. Her voice is naturally comforting and never sinks to the whiny depths so many singers adopt in an effort to make you feel like a lesser human being for not feeling their degree of pain or joy." Later in that same video, she chases down an unwilling participant in the party and forcibly cloaks him as well. The sight of her six-foot tall frame following the uninitiated bystander is the perfect visual for the effect Orton's music has on neophytes; it forces you to contemplate exactly how this shy, gawky Brit reaches inside of you and plucks on those hardened heartstrings. That's the legacy of two Beth Orton albums. She's gained the respect of her peers. Her music impressed reclusive director Hal Hartley so much, he asked to direct the breakthrough clip for "Stolen Car." She's been honored with many critical accolades - there are almost too many to count - and she received back-to-back Mercury Prize nominations for Trailer Park and Central Reservation. Not completely grounded in folk arrangements, yet not possessing big enough beats to find herself with a Fatboy Slim remix, she straddles enough boundaries to only require slight alterations to truly fit any one genre. Her acoustic moments make her sound like an experienced folk singer-songwriter. She collaborated with The Chemical Brothers and provided herself with an impressive electronica scenester following. She finds inspiration from jazz hero Terry Callier. She'll take the influence of Massive Attack on dub reggae and fuse it together with an acoustic guitar. These distinct ingredients make her all the more appealing to a wide variety of fans. How often can someone be that versatile and still come off with integrity while adding those little differences? If there weren't enough genres floating around her recordings, you also get the sense that Beth Orton has the blues. The feelings generated from soul music, or "the blues," exist beyond boundaries of genre, race or creed. It's a feeling, an emotion, derived from the inner core of her being. Beth Orton plumbs those depths as only someone who has done some serious soul searching can do. Frank Gordon seconds that emotion: "I mean, she found her voice from singing while vacuuming! That's where true emotions come from - people with the most heart find inspiration from the mundane, and that's what I love about Beth Orton. You can't see her drowning her sorrows in a bar or contemplating suicide in a barren apartment. She probably gets her inspiration from something as simple as seeing someone board a bus." As bohemian and wise as it comes, Orton's music seems to bear a burden that few artists can ever carry. Heavy moments are painful, sad moments are sombre, even happier moments tend to be wistful or sentimental. The tender way she stumbles on the word "died" on "Pass In Time" when she sings the line "My mother told me just before she died,/Oh darling, darling, don't you be like me" is as endearing and empathetic a moment ever captured on record. You can hear the lack of ease there is in uttering those words, how it truly affects Orton. Such vulnerability mixed in with the song's ultimate message of love shows that Orton is writing AND singing from the depths of her very soul - these are her own thoughts bravely exposed for the world to hear. And what's great about her is that if she fails to move you, you know she really couldn't care a less. She's too interested in having those experiences captured as distinctly as possible; if you don't like it, Beth would likely say, "Well, then sod off." She's not begging for your praise, she's looking for herself. And that's why we can identify with her, and praise her anyway. She's this generation's Joni Mitchell, a poetess and a singer who transcends man-made lines to uncover a beauty in expression of words and music to rouse like-minded artists to action. Like Janet Jackson was inspired to use a sample of Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" on her own hit single, no doubt someone reading this will one day recall a line or thought expressed by Orton and want to share the feeling it gave him or her. That sort of deep psychological connection will make someone assess their own experiences and likely transform them into something as beautiful as the songs of Beth Orton. Perhaps Gilian Maltby will carry the torch: "Beth Orton is the real deal. No posing, no larger-than-life image, no artifice - she's just another person out there with a desire to express herself. The motives driving her music couldn't be any purer. She's inspired my own songwriting, and if I ever win a Grammy, she'll be the first person I'll thank."
|
| > Boston Globe 19 June 1999 |
| First, the bad news. Beth Orton woke up with
an impacted wisdom tooth and was in terrible pain - with a mood to match -
the day we spoke on the phone. On the upside, her condition inspired some
stream-of-consciousness riffing on the connection between pain and wisdom.
''It's like my tooth, trying to come through. Pain brings about growth.
And growth is wisdom. It's sort of about being rooted and not rooted. Being not rooted gives you other roots,'' says Orton, who plays at the Guinness Fleadh today. Forgive the British singer-songwriter her rambling. She aches in lots of places. And besides, it's that wandering spirit that fuels her music. Equal parts wired and winsome, Orton navigates traditional folk music, hip-hop beats, and electronica in the span of a song. This is a girl who collaborates with Chicago soul singer Terry Callier one minute, and dance-floor gurus the Chemical Brothers the next. ''It's funny. I think it's possible to have these conflicting polar opposites in us all the time,'' says Orton. She's not talking simply about sonic styles. Lyrically, as well, the 28-year-old Londoner fuses a patchwork of heartbreak and hopefulness that matches her music with an eerie sort of emotional lull - and the dreamy sensation of both coming and going at once. ''Yeah, I was thinking about that just today. As soon as you see one thing as the truth, it's almost a lie a second later, I suppose. Music is for me a way of trying to gain some kind of truth.'' Dubbed the Comedown Queen by the London press, Orton is quick to point out that she's actually not the sullen depressive that her nickname suggests. ''I'm not a broken-down, heartbroken person. I think that term's got a different connotation in England. People in London put on my record after coming home from the clubs. You know, I like to give people a good landing.'' Though Orton's 1997 solo debut, ''Trailer Park,'' was an intoxicating trance-folk cocktail, her new CD, ''Central Reservation,'' is less consistent. Orton was reportedly dealing with serious health issues during the recording sessions, and some emotional ones, too. ''You know, everything really was quite tough,'' Orton concedes. ''But it's always like you've never made a record before and you're a complete novice. We started off strangely. We lost a producer and I wasn't well for a while.'' She declines to elaborate on that subject, but offers that ''it was tough for strange reasons. Some days it all falls into place, though. Like on `Sweetest Decline,' when Dr. John happened to be next door and came in and played.'' Orton will bring a sparse band of drums, bass, and acoustic guitar to the Fleadh (and the Newport Folk Festival, where she'll play in August). Is she concerned about her music reaching people in such a large concert setting? ''I've done one or two before. And yeah, it can be difficult. But it's all right as long as I'm singing.'' By Joan Anderman |
| > NME 1997 Songs In The Key Of Life |
| BETH ORTON'S SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE First Record You Can Remember: 'Denis' - Blondie Record That Reminds You Of School: 'I Feel Love' - Donna Summer Record You Fell In Love To: 'Solid Air' - John Martyn Heartbreak Tune: 'All The King's Horses' - Aretha Franklin Record That Evokes The Greatest Summer Of Your Life: 'Martha My Dear' - The Beatles Record That Inspired You To Form A Band: 'The New Folk Sound Of Terry Callier' -
Terry Callier Record For A Night On The Tiles: Anything by RL Burnside Record Guaranteed To Clear The TourBus: Anything by Ellen Macawayne New Year's Eve, 1999, What's On The Hi-Fi?: 'Under The Influence Of Love' - Barry
White Record You Would Like Played At Your Funeral: 'Some Of Your Lovin'' - Dusty Springfield |
| > Sonic Net album review 19 June 1999 |
| Beth Orton Crafts Lush
Sounds On Central Reservation
Singer/songwriter parts from acoustic/electronic spareness of debut for warmer tones. Staff Writer Chris Nelson reports. When people - and critics in particular - pinpoint you as the epicenter of an innovative sound, it can be difficult to try something new, according to singer/songwriter Beth Orton. But for her sophomore album, Central Reservation, Orton said she had to push aside the spare pairing of folk acoustics and modern electronica that defined her acclaimed debut, Trailer Park (1997). "A lot of people were saying I should make another Trailer Park, but I didn't want to make another one," the 29-year-old Brit, and upcoming Lilith Fair participant, said during a recent SonicNet/Yahoo chat. "I think the people were into it. There was a vibe captured there and it was very special." For Central Reservation, released in March, Orton pursued a much warmer - at times even lush - sound, on such songs as "Sweetest Decline". To help her realize that vision, she enlisted, song by song, a team's worth of collaborators more respected for their musicianship than for the potential to sell more CDs: folkie Ben Harper, New Orleans pianist Dr. John, guitarist David Robox of neo-psychedelics Mazzy Star and even John Wood, the original producer for '60s and '70s cult musician Nick Drake. While Orton concedes the songs on her album are born of her own experiences, she skips the chance to explicate them, preferring to leave the songs' depths up to the imaginations of listeners. Nonetheless, she does offer some guideposts to the direction of a song, including the album-opening "Stolen Car" . "It's about breaking the chain, breaking the pattern, the discontinuation of old habits - or not, as the case may be," Orton said. "Every line speaks the language of love / But never held the meaning I was thinking of," she sings atop a busy, multitextured mix, before a buzzing electric guitar wedges itself into the foreground. Although Orton can't be classified as a traditional folk singer, she writes on acoustic guitar. Still, it wasn't that guitar sound that first brought her notice, but rather her vocals on the Chemical Brothers' electronica cut "Alive Alone." She later worked with William Orbit - who crafted Madonna's electronica makeover - on Trailer Park and its acoustic/electronic meldings, including the seductive "She Cries Your Name." The Chemical Brothers' Ed Simons has since become a fan of the singer he and partner Ed Simons helped launch. "I like [Central Reservation]," he said recently. "It's a grower." While Central Reservation was written almost entirely in the studio without demos or rehearsing, Orton said the creative process doesn't stop there, but continues onstage. She's found this especially true of the lilting "Sweetest Decline." "It's still the same song, but you never sing the same song twice," she said. "It opens up in a new way every night; that's the great thing about touring." On Saturday (June 19), Orton will perform at the Boston stop of the outdoor Fleadh Fest, wrapping up two weeks of a U.S. club tour. Orton will return to U.S. venues in July, when she plays the second stage on the opening eight dates of the Lilith Fair, July 8-17. As a veteran of the female-centered tour - she also played on the outing's inaugural run in '97 - Orton said the bonds created have the potential to grow profoundly. "There was a special energy there and it made me quite emotional to be there," she said. "My big bond was with [country singer] Emmylou Harris, she was just so sweet. She plants a good seed wherever she goes. No pretenses. When you do what you love to do, then you're just happy."
|
| > Chicago Tribune Q&A, 1999 |
| Q: I understand you spent the
morning at the dentist? A: Yeah. My wisdom tooth's growing through. Q: Eughh. So the stories about English
teeth... Q: What's impressive about "Central
Reservation" is that you employ so many styles - jazz, ambient, dance
music - simultaneously. Were you out to consciously change the sound
between "Trailer Park" and "Central Reservation"? Q: And while your voice is important, it's
simply one component of the complete sound. Q: So what's your central reservation? Q: When you see yourself described as
"a bummed-out angel in the badlands of love" (in Details) or
"a space cowboy with a stolen car heart," (in Rolling Stone) do
you ever want to call these writers and say, "Oh, quit it?" Q: Do you generally like playing big
festival gigs? Q: Any survival tips for people who brave
the heat and spend all day at the show? First Person by Steve Darnall
|
| > Jane Magazine 1999 |
| Beth Orton is a moody lady. When
I saw her tape an amazing performance for PBS's Sessions at West 54th, she
chatted wittily, then burst into tears during "Devil's Song," a
spooky ballad from her excellent new CD, Central Reservation. Today the
lanky Londoner with the big, beautiful eyes confesses to being "a bit
dazed" and has nothing much to say. "What were you trying to
accomplish with the follow-up to your acclaimed trip hop/folk debut,
Beth?" I ask. "I wasn't really trying to accomplish
anything," she replies. "I read that you wanted to do something
'summer and fresh,'" I press on. "Maybe," she says. Beth
will mess up that album's title cut is about a sense of freedom, or in fun
British terms, "not giving a toss." Appropriate, since this
28-year-old was hardly looking for a music career when she bummed a light
off of William Orbit in a nightclub. William, the mastermind behind
Madonna's Ray of Light, liked Beth's speaking voice enough to invite her
into the studio. "The upside to smoking is that you get to be
social," she observes. "I was looking for a light when I bumped
into Ben Harper's manager. A couple of days later, Ben and I were in the
studio." Now don't all of you run out and start smoking just to get a
record deal - David Thorpe
|
| > Boston Globe album review March 25 1999 |
| Critics exulted over Beth
Orton's debut album, "Trailer Park," two years ago. But this new
effort, while still boasting her striking voice, feels more like a holding
pattern. Orton occupies the dreamy, psychedelic side of folk-pop - with a
hypnotic voice that sometimes echoes the great Sandy Denny of Fairport
Convention - but too many songs fall into a down-tempo rut and don't
really go anywhere. There is nothing as powerful as "Galaxy of
Emptiness" from her first CD. And many songs have half-baked lyrics
such as "she's deep as a well" and "today is whatever I
want it to mean." Orton sings this limited material so beautifully,
however, that you're still in her corner. She also shows good taste in
musical backup, enlisting cult-figure supreme Ben Harper for eerie
electric guitar on two tracks, New Orleans' Dr John for tastefully simple
piano lines on "The Sweetest Decline," and Ben Watt from
Everything But the Girl for artful programming on two other tracks. Orton
also plays a fine, filigreed acoustic guitar style, but next time, it
would behoove her to be less craft-conscious and let her soul carry her
away. - Steve Morse
|
| > Connecticut River Valley Advocate (Western Mass & CT), 1999 |
| Songs for a Blue Guitar
Beth Orton ditches the dance floor on
Central Reservation When Beth Orton debuted two years ago, with the transcendent techno-folk amalgam Trailer Park, she seemed like the harbinger of a new pop aesthetic, her album signaling a trend uniting arty, introspective songbirds with of-the-moment club sounds. Grounded in the bucolic English Folk tradition of Sandy Denny, John Martyn and Nick Drake but equally schooled in the hard-to-learn idioms of electronic dance music, Orton couldn't have timed her debut any better. The release of Trailer Park coincided with both the height of the singer-songwriter renaissance and the rise of electronica as a marketable pop commodity. But while the album did influence Madonna's Ray of Light (whose producer, William Orbit, collaborated with Orton on the proto-trip-hop Super Pinky Mandy), the marriage of singer-songwriters and samplers never really materialized, and Trailer Park more or less remains a trend unto itself, at once behind and ahead of its time. Indeed, Orton's music projects a distinctly timeless aura even while relying on modern circuitry for part of its allure. It's a paradox that was responsible for Trailer Park's most resonant moments, but one that, you could tell, Orton had a hard time reconciling. Orton's new album, the bewitching Central Reservation (Arista / Deconstruction), almost wholly abandons the drum loops and sequenced sounds of her debut. It's as if she got tired of being tagged Chemical Sister (a reference to her occasional appearances with electro-wizards The Chemical Brothers); this collection of 12 songs seems designed expressly for those who dance only within the infinite space of their own minds. It's not that Trailer Park was that dance floor-friendly. Blending lachrymose reflections with lazy, somnambulant grooves, it was more of a chill-out room, a cozy haven for weary, injured souls. As such, the album was a logical progression from the music of bands like Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky, artists who experimented with incorporating traditional song forms into their druggy soul trances. Orton, however, was the first to seek an actual union between electronica and the singer-songwriter sensibility. Listeners drawn to Orton for that very reason may find Central Reservation ultimately less interesting, but its pleasures lie less on the surface - as is the case with most dance music - than in the album's rich textures. It's more of a traditional folk album, to be sure, but don't call Orton a Luddite. She's not wistful for any bygone era, but finds in those sacred texts of the '60s and '70s - Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking or Terry Callier's What Color Is Love, for example - a language of yearning that's missing in all but today's best dance music. And Orton doesn't just echo or speak through this language, but stretches it into new shapes, inviting listeners to crawl up inside. Actually, Central Reservation doesn't totally dispense with the late-'90s accents. Two of the album's 12 songs feature programmed beats and "abstract sounds," which is not surprising considering their pedigree (both tracks were produced by Benn Watt, whose own group, Everything But The Girl, established the template for intelligent dance-pop). The first of these tunes, the "Stars All Seem To Weep," is a moody hip-hop-flavored track that features a modified version of the high-frequency keyboard sound Dr. Dre popularized on The Chronic, lending the song an eerie, disorienting effect. Here, as on Trailer Park's "Tangent," Orton expertly uses sonics to convey that dazed feeling that accompanies significant loss - of love, faith, sense of self. The second, a remix of the title track, is less compelling. With its gentle pulses and organic breakbeats, Watt's softcore makeover will definitely work on Adult Contemporary radio and in those cafes and boutiques that canonized Walking Wounded. But this song is a blissed-out house track waiting to happen, and hopefully someone like Deep Dish or BT will eventually get their hands on it. Orton has been criticized for the shallowness of her words, a charge that unfairly demands that singer-songwriters be the source of lyrical profundity or clever wordplay. Orton's lyrics, instead, take the form of meditations, fractured insights that the artist inhabits with a sort of Buddhist detachment, embodying the spiritual shift taking place in pop music these days, from Lauryn Hill and the Beastie Boys to Duncan Sheik and Madonna. Her ruminations on heartbreak and unfulfilled desire may seem simple to some, but if you've ever longed so hard that it hurt, you know exactly where she's coming from. Still, Orton does rely more on pure sound than words to communicate feeling and mood. She's not the first folkie to do so. On albums like Happy/Sad and Blue Afternoon, Tim Buckley began to experiment with space and dynamics, reimagining the folk form as a gorgeous sprawl. The songs on Central Reservation are all built around Orton's acoustic guitar and elegant, entrancing melodies, but she introduces subtle flourishes, including vibes and string parts, which lend the tracks a sensuous feel. Guest appearances abound as well: New Orleans pianist Dr. John plays on the lovely, languid "Sweetest Decline;" Ben Harper adds backward guitar to the stunning "Stolen Car;" and Paisley Underground founding member and Mazzy Star mastermind David Roback produces two of the album's tracks. And as on Orton's Best Bit EP of last year, soul-jazz folkie Terry Callier contributes a vocal performance so sincere that you wonder why it took so long for him to be rediscovered. On top of all of this is Orton's voice, a dreamy, angelic wonder as bittersweet as burnt caramel ice cream. Dance aficionados may miss the days when Orton moved among their set, but I'll take that voice over all the digitalia in the world any day.
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| > NME 8 May 1999 |
| ON THE COUCH WITH BETH
Which song describes you best? "'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' by Nina Simone." What is heaven? "Heaven is what we spend our lives trying to find." What is hell? "The war in Yugoslavia. And the evil that everyday people are capable of, which I think is bred from paranoia." What is your earliest memory? "Being scared of sand. I remember sitting on a blanket at the seaside, poking at the sand very quickly and being quite frightened of it." What's your greatest fear? "I'd say my greatest fear is fear itself." Who is your all-time hero? "Oooh. I don't know. I reckon maybe it might be the taxi driver I had last night, Janet. Anyone with spirit and life force and the will to sort of make a go of things, you know? I quite admire people like that." What's the worst trouble you've been in? "I don't believe in trouble. Because I think that trouble is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I've been known to be called trouble, which I think is quite a compliment. But I suppose, thinking about it, that my best and worst trouble has always had something to do with a man." Who was the first love of your life? "Brian, the lion. My mum made him for me. He's a lion made out of corduroy, sort of in the shape of a turd. With a big flat corduroy face and trifle nose made out of Fuzzy Felt, a wool mane and a little wool tail. And now all that exists of Brian the lion is his head. His body disintegrated." What is your greatest talent? "I suppose it must be bringing people together. I'm quite good at that, I think." Upon whom would you most like to exact revenge? "No-one. I reckon what goes around comes around. I do. I don't need to do it, because eventually it just sort of happens anyway." What is your most treasured possession? "My guitar. And my self-respect." What have you most regretted doing while drunk? "Definitely shagging the wrong person. It has to be. Awful business. Suddenly you wake up in bed with your best friend or something. Awful." What can you cook? "Anything I put my mind to. I like to cook." What is the best piece of advice you've received? "'No matter. Fail better next time.'" Can you read music? "No." If you were invisible for a day, what would you do? "Close my eyes." If you had three wishes, what would they be? "If I told you, they wouldn't come true. Ha! I got out of that, didn't I?"
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| > Newsday Magazine June 3rd 1999 |
| Last week, when I called Beth
Orton at a midtown rehearsal studio where she was preparing for a tour–which
pulls into Roseland Thursday, June 3 – I was greeted by two surprises.
The first was that Orton was actually in mid-song and rather than being put on hold, I was treated to an in-progress rendition of "Feeling to Believe", a sweet meditation about esteem and prerogative from her latest recording, "Central Reservation" (Deconstruction/Arista). The second surprise was Orton herself. She writes piercingly introspective lyrics, but on the phone she was cheeky and light. Especially with her slight cockney accent, the tone of our conversation was better suited for a pair of ales and Manchester United game on the telly rather a journalistic inquiry. Orton, like many of her contemporaries, brings together seemingly disparate elements and makes them mesh seamlessly. She merges the British folk singer traditions of Nick Drake and Sandy Denny with timely DJ experimentation. Orton first gained notice in 1995 on the Chemical Brothers’ "Alive Alone" from their debut recording "Exit Planet Dust" on which she sang, "I’m alive". In addition, she had been collaborating with William Orbit, now known as the producer who crafted Madonna’s "Ray of Light". On Orton’s first widely distributed recording "Trailer park", the atmospherics of the DJ were prominent, but rather than overshadow it, they heighten the power of her dry, raspy voice. Orton’s new release is more acoustic, but they title track, which contains the vivid line " I can still smell you on my fingers and taste you on my breath," was originally done up-tempo with a mix by Everything But the Girl’s Ben Watt. "I wanted to try a different way of approaching the song," she said. "I did the slower version later; its more of a work in progress." Lately there have been rumors that Orton is looking to move into films. She expressed considerable admiration for Lisa Cholodenko’s "High Art", a well received film on the independent circuit last year. And the 29-year0old Londoner, who began her career as an actress, admits that she has been approached by some film makers. " I’ve been offered a couple of roles that weren’t really right. I don’t know if I want to do that. I’d rather pursue music really. It’s something that I’m more naturally grounded into. I’m sure if something came up and it was right, then I’d be interested in acting, but I don’t really want to go looking for it."
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