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> APRIL - JULY 1999

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About Stolen Car

The first fruits of her new album, 'Stolen Car', is a beautiful, sweeping, echo-y track, soaked in imagery and brimming with all the characteristics which make Beth Orton's music wholly unique and beloved. Guest guitar comes from Ben Harper and the video for the song has been directed by acclaimed American film maker Hal Hartley, the man responsible for cult classics 'Trust', 'The Unbelievable Truth' and 'Amateur'. The video was filmed with Beth in New York in November.

B-sides are the awesomely gorgeous 'I Love How You Love Me' - a song written out of the famous Brill Building which was originally recorded by the Paris Sisters and produced by Phil Spector. Beth recorded her exquisite version for the soundtrack to British film 'Mojo'. Haunting dirty blues track 'Precious Maybe' is a Beth Orton original and was recorded for the soundtrack to Irvine Welsh's 'Acid House Trilogy'. CD2 features a live version of former single 'Touch Me With Your Love' and acoustic version of brand new song 'Stars All Seem To Weep'.

The new LP, 'Central Reservation', will be unleashed on the 15th March. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back Beth Orton. This time the world's her oyster.

Beth Orton's 1996 debut album 'Trailer Park' was released quietly in November of that year. It was preceded by neither hit single nor marketing hyperbole. It was a record of stark and powerful beauty, written and recorded by a 25 year old whose only previous musical forays had been guesting as vocalist on records by Red Snapper, William Orbit and The (as yet relatively unknown) Chemical Brothers. From a shaky start as a solo artist, perched on a bar stool with an acoustic guitar in the corner of a Soho pub, Beth Orton has come a long, long way.

'Trailer Park' went on to coolly clock up 300,000 sales around the world and earned her nominations for the 1997 Mercury Music Prize and two Brit Awards (for 'Best British Female Artist' and 'Best British Newcomer'). Beth spent 1997 leading her band around the world, winning over Europe and the UK before joining the mega-successful Lillith Fair in America and culminating with a sell-out 27th Birthday gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire last December.

'Trailer Park' was a slow-burner; a charismatic record of unique rhythm-infused folk that evaded pigeon-holing, and found itself blossom from a hum of critical praise into a multiple award nominee and gold status sales. With the album's success Beth Orton evolved from a virtual unknown to front cover star by whispered word of mouth in little over two years. Her addition of sublime vocals to both Chemical Brother's albums and her own album's collaborations with Andrew Weatherall found her bridging the gap between folk aficionados and seasoned clubbers; 'Trailer Park's ubiquitous presence at every post-club chill out party earning her the merry title of 'The Comedown Queen' in the dance music press. Last December's 'Best Bit e.p', recorded with folk-jazz hero Terry Callier, was her biggest chart success to date.

About Central Reservation

  Her new album 'Central Reservation' is a quantum leap from what has gone before. Beth's voice is richer; the songs confident and vivid. First single (March 1st) 'Stolen Car' is a beautiful, sweeping, echo-y track, soaked in imagery and brimming with all the characteristics which make Beth Orton's music wholly unique and beloved. Guest guitar comes from Ben Harper and the video for the song has been directed by acclaimed American film maker Hal Hartley, the man responsible for cult classics 'Trust', 'The Unbelievable Truth' and 'Amateur'. The video was filmed with Beth in New York in November.

Beth has worked with her usual live band on the album with the addition of some very special guests. 'Sweetest Decline' features the piano-playing talents of the legendary Dr John, while 'Pass In Time' has Beth's musical hero Terry Callier on backing vocals. Ben Harper provides his distinctive guitar sound to 'Stolen Car' and 'Love Like Laughter'. Ben Watt (from Everything But The Girl) produced 'Stars All Seem To Weep' and the final version of 'Central Reservation'. The album was produced by Victor Van Vugt (who produced 'Trailer Park') and David Roback (from Mazzy Star), with production duties on 'Pass In Time' from Dr Robert (taken from the original 'Best Bit' recording sessions).

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back Beth Orton. This time the world's her oyster.

Beth Orton's 1996 debut album 'Trailer Park' was released quietly in November of that year. It was preceded by neither hit single nor marketing hyperbole. It was a record of stark and powerful beauty, written and recorded by a 25 year old whose only previous musical forays had been guesting as vocalist on records by Red Snapper, William Orbit and The (as yet relatively unknown) Chemical Brothers. From a shaky start as a solo artist, perched on a bar stool with an acoustic guitar in the corner of a Soho pub, Beth Orton has come a long, long way.

'Trailer Park' went on to cooly clock up 300,000 sales around the world and earned her nominations for the 1997 Mercury Music Prize and two Brit Awards (for 'Best British Female Artist' and 'Best British Newcomer'). Beth spent 1997 leading her band around the world, winning over Europe and the UK before joining the mega-successful Lillith Fair in America and culminating with a sell-out 27th Birthday gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire last December.

'Trailer Park' was a slow-burner; a charismatic record of unique rhythm-infused folk that evaded pigeon-holing and found itself blossom from a hum of critical praise into a multiple award nominee and gold status sales. With the album's success Beth Orton evolved from a virtual unknown to front cover star by whispered word of mouth in little over two years. Her addition of sublime vocals to both Chemical Brother's albums and her own album's collaborations with Andrew Weatherall found her bridging the gap between folk aficionados and seasoned clubbers; 'Trailer Park's ubiquitous presence at every post-club chill out party earning her the merry title of 'The Comedown Queen' in the dance music press. Last December's 'Best Bit e.p', recorded with folk-jazz hero Terry Callier, was her biggest chart success to date.

The singer-songwriter’s second album Central Reservation (released on March 8 and with a video by US director Hal Hartley) will build on the success of her 1996 debut Trailer Park, which from quiet beginnings attracted a solid audience and critical acclaim that resulted in a Mercury Award nomination.

On Central Reservation Orton sounds distinctly more assured vocally and delivers a more accomplished set of songs. With a languid, jazzy feel to many of the tracks, Orton has been assisted by artists such as Terry Callier, Ben Harper, Everything But The Girl’s Ben Watt and Mazzy Star’s David Roback.

Jeff Barrett, managing director of Orton’s Heavenly label, says that the single Stolen Car (released February 22 and with a video by US director Hal Hartley) is the artist’s strongest yet and is likely to change the perception of Orton as being predominantly an album artist.

"I think that’ll change this time. But an important thing was that Radio One really supported us last time, and we found that even though Beth’s singles only hit around the 40 mark, every time we put a single out the albums sales started rising," he says. Indeed, Orton’s Best Bit EP, which featured collaborations with folk/jazz legend Terry Callier, sold 40,000 copies without cracking the Top 40.

All of this is music to the ears of Deconstruction/Arista with whom Heavenly has a licensing agreement. With the upheavals of the last two years Orton is one of Arista’s few remaining domestic artists with a proven record.

Despite the level of expectation, Orton says she felt under no more pressure while making the album. "When it came to the recording, it was something I just had to block out of my mind. I don’t think it’s good to write as a reaction or just for some specific goal," she says.

Problems finding the right producer and her involvement in the Lillith Fair tour meant much had to be recorded around touring in seven studios.

This time around her US release, which will be through Arista, is a particular priority. Her last album sold 160,000 copies via the BMG-distributed indie Dedicated and its staffers Ben Weber and Jake Orton will be working as consultants on Central Reservation. Orton has already been in America doing extensive promotion to build on the strong press coverage she has enjoyed from the likes of Time and Rolling Stone and Arista has committed to spending on radio promotion to back the record.

One of Orton’s secret weapons, however, is her endearing nature which has set her apart from some of her po-faced American contemporaries. Barrett says, "That’s the reason Americans like her. She’s just totally natural and she’ll make you laugh."

The same is true in the UK. Orton has benefited from a large female fan base that sees her as a less mainstream alternative to the likes of Natalie Imbruglia or Texas. On current form, however, that might not be true as the mainstream beckons.

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 Want To Know About Evil' Beth Orton once covered.

All of these used jazz, keyboards and string-laden arrangements to illustrate the sensual, emotional to-and-fro of their songs, making music that was more than just 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 nod 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 tickling 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. Ratings: 8/10

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After lending her vocal hypnotism to the likes of William Orbit, Red Snapper, and the Chemical Brothers, Beth Orton took the public by storm via her 1996 album Trailer Park, which expertly mixed elements of folk, rustic pop, and hip-hop beats into a tranquilizing melange. Orton continues the winning streak with Central Reservation, an album brimming with mature compositions that judiciously mine the forgotten folk aesthetic with richly textured aplomb.

The album seems custom-made for slowed heartbeats. "Stolen Car" sucks you into the mix thanks to Orton's haunting vibrato and the uplifting, albeit mystical, musical composition: skittering fiddle, weird underlying ambient tinges, trickling bits of acoustic guitar. Orton's words take on the air of a lackadaisical siren on the mesmerizingly sparse "So Much More," pulling you into her world solely with her rapturous voice. The title track is stripped down to nothing more than faltering guitar, piano, and light orchestral accompaniment, while Orton's voice seemingly rises into the heavens. Both "Blood Red River" and "Devil's Song" return to the folk aesthetic, allowing Orton's mournful alto to spin its seductive web.

The album's most upbeat and disarming composition comes in the form of "Stars All Seem to Weep," which instills a throbbing hip-hop groove underneath the acoustic guitar and Orton's organic voice. She even brings a little cocktail beat attitude to the forefront in the warm, swaying "Couldn't Cause Me Harm."

Considerably more stripped-down than Trailer Park, Central Reservation gently forces the listener to focus on Orton's vocal talents. And with good reason. Orton possesses one of those rare voices that could melt steel, its warm, luxurious timbre bringing joyous tears to the eyes and a bittersweet smile to the lips in the process. This is, by and large, a disc filled with quiet passion and beguiling intensity, the perfect sonic accompaniment to rainy days, lazy Sunday mornings, and those wavering interludes of late night contemplation.

Meanwhile, there are plans from the 2 Os, Orbit and Orton, to work on some tracks originally featured in SuperPinkyMandy. The album was Orton first ever full-length release and was only released in Japan. Right now, the album is deleted and had become a rare item to get hold of. Even rarer than Tori Amos's Y Kant Tori Read.

There's a point at which tragedy becomes mundane, even funny. Beth Orton lives there, and you're welcome to visit. She's sitting on a lawn in front of a friend's house in the Pasadena, Calif., hills, the winter sun on her toes, a ruby toy tiara in her hair. Her green eyes are immense; she wears a pink thrift-store sweater. She's just been asked about "Pass in Time," a stunning seven-minute song on her second album, "Central Reservation." At first she hesitates. "Pass in Time" is a shimmering waltz about her mother, who died when Beth was 19. "She's very hard to sum up," says Orton, who's now 28. "I'm still kind of working it out myself." No problem—we can move on to a different subject. What does your dad do? Orton hangs her head. "He's dead as well," she says quietly. Then laughter comes out of her in big, relief-filled gasps. "You've got to see the funny side of it," she says. "It's hilarious. My life's a f---ing minefield."
Then let's get on to some safer ground. "Central Reservation" is a glorious accomplishment—the kind of album we critics get all hot and bothered over and you rock fans will want to keep in your collections forever. Orton's in love with melancholy: her songs drift along on oceans of strings, with brushed drums and Stax-style organ adding cushions of soul. Her lyrics are less narratives than fragments of personal philosophy; she ruminates about the miserable ways people treat each other, and looks for comfort in her own solitude. Her influences are tiptop. She got her break working with techno giants the Chemical Brothers, but she's also steeped in '60s folk. She's got a hint of Dusty Springfield's yearning in her voice, and like another of her heroes, Joni Mitchell, she can be a bit of a crank. "I f---in' hate doin' interviews," she says, her demeanor shifting from angelic to fierce. "I don't like being questioned, ever."

And yet, at the next moment she's opening herself up with abandon. She's from Norfolk, England, which she describes as "flat as a pancake. Amazing horizons. Sky coming down to your toes." She dreamed of being an actress, a blues singer, a writer—anything that would spark her imagination. "I used to sing in the bath—whole little mini-operas," she says. "And I've always written, since I was young. Poems, metaphors, little synopses of emotions." Much of her inspiration—and her rebellious spirit—comes from her mother. "She had a wildness to her," says Beth. "Her parents were quite religious, and she was kind of repressed. She had this thing that one day she'd stand up in church and shout 'Penis!' at the top of her voice."

She laughs again, a slightly manic laugh. "You know that feeling?" she continues. "Like you're just going to throw yourself under a train or something? I think people in general get that way." She likes this idea. She sits back on the hillside and thinks it over. Then just as quickly it's gone, and she's looking at you, wondering what on earth you're going to ask next.

Receiving a phone call from Beck is a big deal. Celebrated worldwide as one of music's few original voices, the 28-year-old Californian won acclaim for the 1996 album Odelay - a stunning mix of hip-hop rhythms, Mexican mariachi music, Seventies funk and out-and-out pop. It sold millions and won him prestigious Grammy Awards in America. Since then, he has been feted by the fashion world (Prada just love him, darling) and lionised by the art world (he exhibited his collages in Santa Monica and New York). When Noel Gallagher of Oasis remixed Beck's single 'Devil's Haircut', you knew who was doing whom a favour.
So when Beck calls you from Los Angeles to give you advice from his personal physician, or to invite you into his studio, you know you have done something special.

For Beth Orton, a 6ft-tall East Anglian girl with an acoustic guitar, that something special was releasing an album of simple folk songs called Trailer Park, in 1996. It came out on Heavenly, a tiny Soho record label more associated with indie rock and the infamously hedonistic London club, The Heavenly Social, which first introduced the world to the crazy, 'big-beat' sounds of the Chemical Brothers. Against all expectations, Orton's album sold a remarkable 300,000 copies around the world. It was nominated for Britain's Mercury Music Prize. And, while the cooler margins of the British music scene were turning up their guitars and being terribly, dangerously rock'n'roll, Trailer Park reintroduced the pleasures of proper, real Songwriting. Describing Orton's music, Beck said: 'My songs are all elbows, but your songs are soft cheeks.'

'The response I've got from people is that they feel the music's from the heart,' says Orton. This, in simple terms, partly explains the word-of-mouth success of Trailer Park. This was music that spoke to people and, in turn, encouraged them to tell their friends about it. There was no me-me-me bravado, or we're-the-best-band-in-the-world arrogance. There were tunes you could hear, lyrics you could understand, vulnerabilities you could share. Just as Bristol trip-hop group Portishead brought new emotional depths to dance music, so Orton showed that passion in pop didn't always have to involve shouting. Next week's fine successor to Trailer Park, Central Reservation, does this job even better.

'When I write songs, it's a feeling,' says Orton. 'I play chords not because I know they work - I don't understand diminished-this and depressed-that. I feel my chords. "Ooh, that feels right... ooh, that feels right - ah, there, now I'm satisfied." And bang! A melody will come. That is my writing process.'

In short, after Trailer Park, you would never again have to wear a thick jumper, drink thicker cider, or stick a finger in your ear, to like folk music. Belle & Sebastian, the glad-to-be-fey Scottish group who were surprise winners in the Best Newcomers award at the Brit Awards earlier this month, are the latest example of the shift in young British music towards classic, pre-rock'n'roll songwriting.

'I wouldn't say I was a folk singer,' Orton counters. 'Yes, I use acoustic guitars, but my music is like soul-funk. Soul music without the R&B.'

In February, Orton travelled from her home in London to see the medical specialists in Los Angeles recommended by Beck's doctor. She has suffered from a complaint called Crohn's disease since she was 17. An affliction of the stomach and alimentary canal that can cause severe pain, Crohn's has no known cause and no definite cure. Now, aged 28, Orton is still looking for relief.

She also visited Beck's recording studio, to watch him work. The English country girl and the LA hipster tried to record some music together. But every time they started, her stomach played up. Every time they sat down to write a song, pain got in the way.

Two days later, Beck and Orton did a show together in a small neighbourhood bar. She played one of her songs, he played one of his; she sang backing vocals for him, he played guitar for her. Beck played a sublime new song called 'Beautiful Way to Break Your Heart'. Orton played songs from Central Reservation. Its predecessor, she had said, was 'five years of misery' distilled into musical form. Central Reservation, she considers, is the same, only more so. It is built from more personal tragedy than any one person should have to endure, sudden popular acclaim and recurrent sickness. In the bright light and small space of an LA bar, the songs' deep shadows were even more powerful.

Two weeks after her LA trip, Orton is in the Cobden Club in west London. Tall, vaguely gawky, with a bit of a bed-head, she looks like a wading bird with its feathers on backwards. Her accent pinballs between streetwise London, estuary English and hints of her childhood home in Norfolk, and there are frequent lapses into a menagerie of characters. She tends to round off a point with a funny voice, lest we think she is being too serious about her 'art'.

She is dressed up all posh, not her usual casual workwear self - possibly on account of the photo session, probably not on account of the luxe interior of this private members' club. 'I prefer it next door,' she sniffs, gesturing towards the adjacent Cobden Working Men's Club, a nicotine-yellow, fuggy bar.

The implication is easy to draw, but no less valid for that: Orton is the singer-songwriter from the rickety stool in the corner of the sticky pub. But you could never call her a happy, hippie troubadour. You might call her the missing link between Beck, who himself has recorded two albums of scratchy old American roots music, and Nick Drake, the very English folkie who committed suicide in 1974.

'Blood and guts,' she says eagerly, 'there's a lot of that in there. I would say I came from the earth - I come from the country, originally, and I'm bang into that! There's blood and guts and manure. You put it on the roses.'

Given her life story, Beth Orton should write music that sounds like heavy metallists Black Sabbath, or claustrophobic rapper Tricky, or American horror-rockers Nine Inch Nails - all battered and lumpy and noisy. Her parents separated when she was eight. Three years later, her father died, suddenly and unexpectedly, of a heart attack. Beth had always been lonely, a misfit, but she stopped going to school altogether after her dad died, and began clubbing and drinking instead - pint-glass mixtures of lager, cider and blackcurrant with Pernod for afters. When she was 14, her mother moved to London to make a fresh start: for a while, Beth went to the Anna Scher drama school, but she still felt lonely. Then, when she was 19, her mother died, too and Beth suffered a slow, solitary breakdown. It wasn't until 1989, when she immersed herself in the London club scene, that she found a place where she felt she belonged.

These were the heady years after the acid house boom, when indie rockers, obsessive clubbers and every other youth tribe met and mingled on the dance floor and took Ecstasy together. Orton made friends with a bunch of professional party animals called Primal Scream, the Anglo-Scottish band who had shown - on their 1991 rock/rave crossover album Screamadelica - that they loved leather trousers and long hair as much as they did the repetitive beats and easily available drugs of the newly exploding dance scene. Orton found she shared their enthusiasms.

During this time, she spent three and a half months meditating in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand. After her return, when she was first being courted by record companies, she suffered, briefly, from stress-induced blindness. She also smokes a lot of dope.

All of these currents come together on Central Reservation even more than they do on Trailer Park. 'The hard thing wasn't writing the songs,' she says. 'It was hearing my voice back, my words. I liked my words, I didn't like my words. Some of it was organisation and environment. It was constantly falling together and constantly falling apart. It was the biggest peaks and the biggest troughs. It was a wave. It was like swimming the ocean.' She plays with her hair and thinks about this for a moment. 'Actually,' she sighs, 'if you want the honest truth, I'd done Trailer Park and I thought, "Wow, I got a really nice reaction to that. Bet I haven't got it in me to do it again." And I felt that everyone else thought I didn't have it in me. I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I had these songs, my objectivity on them was a bit squiffy.'

Orton trawled through her past. She faced up to the death of her mother, who she had nursed through breast cancer, in part on the song 'Pass in Time' - a duet with her hero, the rediscovered American soul-folk legend Terry Callier. She acknowledged her obsession with death and disease, things she had been surrounded by from an early age. And she wrestled with her own creative insecurities.

Orton's first musical experiments were less than successful. One night, at a London club, she had met a man known as William Orbit. She was 19 and he was 34. Long before his re-emergence in the past year as the producer who made Madonna convincingly groovy again in Ray of Light, and his role behind the controls on Blur's new album 13, Orbit was a DJ. He was also the force behind pop-dance group Bass-O-Matic. Orbit and Orton became an emotional and musical item. But SuperPinkyMandy, the album they recorded in his London studio, was only released in Japan. Then, encouraged by Orbit, a panicky Orton began the meetings with record companies that would cause her to lose her sight.

But these are all experiences Orton has long since tired of speaking about. Her thoughts on this weight of personal history, she says, can be found in Central Reservation.

'Making it was quite a cathartic process,' she says, laughing. 'It's a very unironic album, very straightforward, very honest and open. That in itself was hard. Someone once said to me, "The more embarrassed you feel making your record, the more painful it is, the more you know you're on the right track." Making this record was like one of those situations in life where you have to be a bit strong, you have to gird your loins. The line I like in [the album track] "Pass in Time" is: "All your doubts become your own beliefs." Doubts and paranoia are such personal things. And sometimes, those doubts can become your personal truth.'

Orton smokes a fag, eats cake and flops her body, all limbs and fringe, around a Cobden Club couch. She is immediately funny and, after a while, frank. There is a lightness about her that comes of possessing deep emotional ballast and, at the same time, from the recent shedding of a burden. She could drink you under the table, give you a cracking dead arm and be the most sympathetic confidante you could ever wish for.

It was only at the end of last year that Orton began to talk in public about Crohn's disease. 'Making the album was hard due to my health as well. There were periods when I wasn't feeling so good, but at that time I wasn't into telling anyone I wasn't feeling good. A bit stupid.' She was 'confused and embarrassed' by the illness.

'I don't get it as bad as some people. Some people have all their bowel removed. I'm finding out that there are a lot of treatments and most of them are not to do with Western medicine. Your diet is a major part of it. A lot of Jewish people have it, and I don't know why. That's why I went to LA, to find out as much as I possibly could. There are doctors in Britain who could help. The only difference is that, there, I'm in the warmth and the sun helps. Then I thought, "It's nothing to be shy about." At the same time, I don't want it to be a focal point.' She laughs loudly. 'You know - "Ill Girl".'

Orton wanted to call her first album Winnebago, but the trademark owners wouldn't let her. Then it was Tangent, or Coming Home. 'It was the feeling of being a nomad, wandering, travelling, not really here or there but living everywhere. Central Reservation follows on from that. It's about running down the middle of the road, off your head, going: "Yesss! Life! I love it! It's beautiful!"'

Beth Orton is reading a book called The Second Brain. It details how, if you completely detach the gut and the bowel from the spine and brain, the gut and bowel still function. The gut, it seems, has as many nerve systems as the brain. 'I've realised now that, if I don't follow my instinct, I get ill. It's black and white, there are no grey squares on the chessboard. I can't mess around any more. This album was about finding my instinct the whole way. Gut instinct.

'So many fantastic things have happened in the past three years. One of the things I've really enjoyed is seeing people's response to the songs and realising that I'm not feeling these things alone. I'm getting more confident with my voice, my songs, my instincts. And it's the best feeling.'

The sophomore slump. It happens to the best of those who create ­ artists and musicians alike. It’s like Murphy’s Law. Other times, they’re just called “one-hit wonders.”

Beth Orton’s debut solo album Trailer Park back in 1996 was on so many critics’ Top 10 of the Year lists that her second venture Central Reservation looked doomed for the slump. Or, to say the least, it has a tough act to follow. But where Orton succeeded in being an innovator by combining elements of folk and electronica in her first album, she coups yet again in Central Reservation. And that is due solely to her ability to adapt. She’s come a long way since her early days with the Chemical Brothers and William Orbit.

Orton’s follow-up album is a lot more soulful, a lot more introspective than Trailer Park. The acoustic sound of this album gives a more personal touch to her songs. Orton all but does away with her previous trip-hop sounds and opts for a more lazy, sultry feel.

In “Stolen Car,” the first track off the album, Orton sings with the voice of a seasoned veteran, much like Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald when these great ladies of song reminisced about love. Orton sounds more mature, more sophisticated in both the ways of love and of music. She asks, “Why should I know better by now when I’m old enough not to?”

The second cut, “Sweetest Decline,” offers up a 1970s kitsch quality (think Carly Simon) and is one of the catchiest songs on the album. The song flows like a stream, with a laid-back quality that shows Orton is indeed “The Comedown Queen.” As she sings, “…can’t pin this butterfly down,” we can’t help but think that Orton is in effect describing herself and her music.

Once deemed the “trippy hippie,” Orton sings with the voice of both youthful yearning and experience. In “Pass in Time,” she chants, “C’mon now, c’mon now child, you’re here just awhile.” It’s more than love she’s after. It’s the spiritual awakening that comes with trial and error, with being “out there” and finding out for yourself first hand. Her haunting voice and lyrics make even the most pessimistic of us listen with intent and regard as she sings about self-reflection and the importance of the seemingly little things that happen in our lives.

No where is it more apparent that Orton has come into her own as a mature singer-songwriter than in the title track. Things are no longer black and white-- there is this area of gray, of ambiguity and of paradoxes. She sings:

This time, this time, this time, is whatever I want it to mean And everything and nothing is as sacred as we’d want it to be When it’s real, make it real, Compared to what?

The singer is more confident in herself, both as a woman and as a musician. This self-assurance is infectious as she coos, “Today is whatever I want it to mean.” We’re playing by Ms. Orton’s rules here. And in another rare incident, the special mix of “Central Reservation” done by Ben Watt was just as appealing and enjoyable as the original version of the song.

In another track, “Stars All Seem To Weep,” Orton returns to her previous style of mixing the melodious ballad with the technobeat. As AP once wrote of Orton’s style in her debut album: “[she] is a folkie with a penchant for filling in the acoustic spaces in her songs with faint drumbeats, spacey beeps and electronic whizzes…” But she does so only on this track (not counting the re-mix).

“Blood Red River” and “Devil Song” are two tracks in which we find Orton to be a harder, more cynical musician. One can only guess what happened between the comparatively naive Orton on Trailer Park and the new, worldlier Orton on Central Reservation. As opposed to her earlier songs of displacement and longing, Orton now sees the world from a different, higher perspective. The bigger picture, if you will. Or the before fame ­ after fame epiphany.

Orton’s sophomore effort is far from a slump. Though many critics may argue that she undoubtedly delivers to her folk music fans (unplugged!) while leaving the dance fans out to hang, it must be noted that Orton’s original crossover appeal may very well help in introducing her trip-hop/electronica fans to a different genre. Central Reservation’s refreshing and mellow sound evokes a youthful exuberance while at the same time showing Beth Orton to be a more well-rounded musician.

-Jo Szeto

http://detox.bluetonic.org/march99/m3.html

-- Carrie Borzillo

British singer/songwriter Beth Orton has been admitted to an undisclosed London hospital for treatment and tests in her long-running battle with Crohn's disease. According to publicist Brendan Bourke of Girlie Action, Orton has been battling the chronic disease, which is an inflammatory intestinal disorder that generally causes ulcers in the small and large intestines, for some time now and has been "sick off and on for the past four months." The disease is usually diagnosed in people during their teens or 20s, and has periods of remission, though there is no known cure. Her illness has caused her to cancel several shows over the past few months, including a show scheduled for last October in Atlanta. It's also complicated the release of her second album, Central Reservation, forcing her to cancel numerous interviews to promote the album, and looks likely to disrupt planned promotional appearances and performances, including one at the South by Southwest Music Conference in mid-March. However, the album is still slated for its planned March 9 release on Arista. Orton is currently undergoing a battery of tests, and her doctors have yet to determine whether surgery will be necessary. Bourke says that Orton will remain in the hospital for at least the next two weeks. Orton's 1997 debut, Trailer Park -- a seamless fusion of folk, pop, and dance music -- was nominated for the U.K.'s coveted Mercury Music Prize, and Central Reservation has been one of 1999's most anticipated releases.

-- David Peisner

Warning: Reading record reviews may be hazardous to your aural health. But don't expect the surgeon general to require this warning on magazine covers, websites and MTV promos anytime soon. For now, you're on your own. Be warned that the aftermath of digesting the critical din can be a loss of ability to hear a record for what it is, powerlessness in separating fresh from stale, hype from hip, quality from crap.

Pop-culture pundits spout off all the time about trends, hoping to be the one that comes up with the "it" word to describe a genre: electronica, Americana, trip-hop, cuddle-core. There's an elite cadre of music critics that write to impress one another, and more than a few of them are guilty of fanciful flights that find them overintellectualizing rock 'n' roll, invoking literary figures and philosophers without any provocation. Perhaps they're trying to prove they're doing something meaningful with their lives. Whatever their motivations, let the record-buying public beware and take those proclamations from on-high as the mildly interesting posturings that they are.

Which brings us -- finally -- to Beth Orton. When her album Trailer Park came out in 1997, critics went plumb loco over the perceived blending of folk and electronica. "The first true union of dance music and the singer/songwriter sensibility," raved SPIN. "Marriage of folk's soul to the wired world of electronic dance music -- Nick Drake meets the Orb," burbled Interview. Well, to my ear, Orton's sound doesn't have much in common with folk, and the hint of electronic gadgetry that snaked through Trailer Park was the least interesting thing about the album.

It's the same deal with her new album, Central Reservation. Yes, the British singer/songwriter has worked with electronica poster children the Chemical Brothers in the past. But so what? Listening to "Central Reservation," it's the delicate guitar work and evocative crooning of her melodic voice that stand out. OK, it's true that there's subtle use of the occasional sound effect to emphasize her often murmuring vocal style, which sounds a bit like Ricki Lee Jones on some tracks and a tad like Joni Mitchell on others, with just a hint of Dusty Springfield thrown in for kicks. And yes, the production here is lush and layered. But electronica? No way. Folk? Not even close.

The opening track, "Stolen Car," is among the strongest on the album, and the lead-in contains -- yes -- some dance-influenced keyboard noodling. I guess since Orton's got a knack for stringing words together to weave stories she gets slapped with the "folk" label, but her style is distinctive and doesn't even faintly resemble traditional folk. She's given to musing with her lyrics and thinking aloud lines like "every line speaks the language of love/ but never had the meaning I was thinking of."

On occasion, Orton gets tripped up by her own voice, drawing notes out until they're teetering on the edge of self-indulgence. And while the production mostly enhances her songs, there are times -- like on the song "Stars All Seem To Weep" -- when the layers of instruments and effects end up sounding syrupy rather than succulent. But these are quibbles. Whether she gets filed under electronica, folk, alternative or flavor-of-the-week, Beth Orton's latest transcends rock-crit hyperbole. It's just a good record that would sound nice on the stereo on a rainy day, so long as you're cozied up safe and warm. I haven't the faintest idea what Nietzsche or Sartre would make of that, and I don't much care.

Julene Snyder

http://www.sonicnet.com/albums/archive/albumarch.jhtml?id=512652

The following are the comments reasoned for her #1: "I lost the line between right and wrong/I just wanna find the place where I belong..." The lead track from the beautiful follow-up to 1996's "Trailer Park" is a quietly propulsive, minor-key rumination, and the perfect gateway to the starkly meditative songs that follow. Highly recommended. (From the "Stolen Car" U.K. single and the upcoming album "Central Reservation", Arista/BMG, out in Canada and the U.S. on March 9)

The other artists that made it to the chart are:

1. Beth Orton - Stolen Car
2. Ariel M - Wedding Song Remix #3
3. Laurel MacDonald - Book Of Wings
4. Mocean Worker - Counts, Dukes and Strays
5. Hershel Savage & The American Flag - Tour 65
6. Rare Jr. - Naked Albino
7. Howie Beno with Cruella Deville - She Bop
8. Chocolate Genius - Half A Man
9. Michael Hedges - Spring Buds
10. Meat Puppets - I Am A Child

This is not the first time Beth made it into the Anti-Hit chart. The first time it happened was on Janurary 13th 1998 when Lean On Me made it to #2 losing the top spot to Goldie's Temper Temper.

What they wrote then: Not the Bill Withers song, this Terry Callier original nonetheless has much the same feel and message, though the lyrics gently imply that the song is actually a message from God. Warm and beautiful and immmeasurably aided by Orton's incomparable vocals. (From the "Best Bit EP", Heavenly Recordings U.K.).

These charts are maintained by John Sakamoto.

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
truth.

"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 comedown 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 here?

Andrew Smith

While not denying the intelligence and effectiveness of parts of Beth Orton's work, said intelligence and effectiveness are run through with other, more annoying strands. There's a lackadaisical, leave-it-to-nature streak in her music that suggests someone thinks it's OK to, like, just chill out in the studio and let the magic just happen in a kind of organic way. Thus, on her second album, vocals go tunelessly awry from time to time, lyrics display a wavering vagueness throughout, and the laziest excesses of '70's pseudo folk are allowed to flourish. From the ersatz Nick Drakery of Sweetest Decline to the overly emoting Stars All Seem to Weep, nothing here is specifically bad or second-rate, just undisciplined and somehow lax, as though the mere fact of actually getting into a studio and making a record is enough.

Arrangements and tunes are stodgy, vocals echo iconic singers like Sandy Denny, without adding anything new, and the whole effect is a ninth generation photocopy of bedsit folk, in the same way that Jamiroquai appropriates the cool and style of Stevie Wonder. The presence of the often-reviled but in reality imaginative and determined Ben Watt only serves to emphasise the wafting ditsiness of this often oddly grim record . That, and the fact that the people playing on this record seem to be playing at being folkies (which, given Orton's stage school background, may even be the case). This isn't a bad record, just a lazy one (Doctor John, last year's token hip muso, is dragged out here to contribute little more than his name on Sweetest Decline), which, given Orton's generally visible talents, is a shame.

I've only heard the tracks on the sampler, so can't comment yet, but let's hope he's badly wrong, or it appears we're likely to be disappointed.

David Quantick

All Folked-Up - Ascoustic warriors of the nu-folk movement, Beth Orton and Ani DiFranco reckon "lovely" is the new edge in 1999.

Surely these are strange days when folkie draw edge cred. But they do. Now that irnoy has killed the radio star and digital has become the main current of the musical discussion, maybe sincerica is, by default, the new avant-grade: They've got acoustic guitars and good intentions, and, against the grain of history, that seems radical right about now.

Or maybe it's just that musicland is now shaped like a hole-in-the-middle frisbee and it's all edges from here on out. Afterall, it's hard to imagine Ani and Beth on the same margin. DiFranco the Righteous Babe banks her cred on tongue-wrestling personal politics; Orton's claim is a little wager - something about being the Chemical Brother's sweet soul sister.

<snip "Ani Difranco's review>

Beth Orton will never make a great album: She has nothing to say. But she says it with one of the most remarkable voices in creation. Pure instruments themselves carry meaning, and emotional power - what they can't deliver is complexity. With no other options available, Central Reservation is simply beautiful.

Trailer Park, her first album, seemed almost gulity about its virtues - as if folk were a 4 letter word that had to be camouflaged in smapled loops and spatial wank. Central Reservation brings it straight to your head: Between the backward electric guitar on the opener and softly electro Ben Watt beat on the closing retake of the title song., it's pretty much acoustic, all the time. The voice is left to stand alone, like a busker on an empty plaza, and it's a moving come-on. Here's my one true thing, says the record, and I'm trying to make it stand for everything.

But sometimes it just falls. The album divides neatly into sides, and after the riveting Stolen Car, the first side sinks into bland optimism and bumper sticker pathos: "What's the use in regrets / They're just things we haven't done yet?" That is why we mistrust folk music in the first place - as a genre, it stands on the verge of Simpler Fi.

But then she remembers the real question: How sweet a sound does it take to save a wretch like her? Round about the flip side she whispers, "Some of the worst wrongs get righted on three chords," finds a heartbreak groove, and it's on. "Blood Red River" chills like hearing a tradition for the first time; "Devil's Song" and "Feels To Believe" continue the flawless drift through the wreckage of the British folk tradition. And for the duration, her voice is so clear it renders the ideas of cred, edges, and great albums irrelevant; for half a record, we'll settle for amazing grace.

Joshua Clover

Beth is featured on another magazine called Time Out. She has a 2 page feature with some photos. Go grab the magazine! My country does not bring in that magazine so I could not supply the article here

Beth Orton finally releases her first single called "Stolen Car" from her new album next Monday, 1st March 1999. The album "Central Reservation" follows on 15th March.

Tracks: CD1: ‘Stolen Car’/‘I Love How You Love Me’/‘Precious Maybe’; CD2: ‘Stolen Car’/ ‘Stars All Seem To Weep’ (acoustic)‘/Touch Me With Your Love’ (live)/ RELEASED 1ST MARCH CATALOGUE NUMBERS HVN89CD + HVN89CD2

Beth Orton’s 1996 debut album ‘Trailer Park’ was released quietly in November of that year. It was preceded by neither hit single nor marketing hyperbole. It was a record of stark and powerful beauty, written and recorded by a 25 year old whose only previous musical forays had been guesting as vocalist on records by Red Snapper, William Orbit and The (as yet relatively unknown) Chemical Brothers. From a shaky start as a solo artist, perched on a bar stool with an acoustic guitar in the corner of a Soho pub, Beth Orton has come a long, long way.

‘Trailer Park’ went on to coolly clock up 300,000 sales around the world and earned her nominations for the 1997 Mercury Music Prize and two Brit Awards (for ‘Best British Female Artist’ and ‘Best British Newcomer’). Beth spent 1997 leading her band around the world, winning over Europe and the UK before joining the mega-successful Lillith Fair in America and culminating with a sell-out 27th Birthday gig at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire last December.

‘Trailer Park’ was a slow-burner; a charismatic record of unique rhythm-infused folk that evaded pigeon-holing, and found itself blossom from a hum of critical praise into a multiple award nominee and gold status sales. With the album’s success Beth Orton evolved from a virtual unknown to front cover star by whispered word of mouth in little over two years. Her addition of sublime vocals to both Chemical Brother’s albums and her own album’s collaborations with Andrew Weatherall found her bridging the gap between folk aficionados and seasoned clubbers; ‘Trailer Park’s ubiquitous presence at every post-club chill out party earning her the merry title of ‘The Comedown Queen’ in the dance music press. Last December’s ‘Best Bit e.p’, recorded with folk-jazz hero Terry Callier, was her biggest chart success to date.

The first fruits of her new album, ‘Stolen Car’, is a beautiful, sweeping, echo-y track, soaked in imagery and brimming with all the characteristics which make Beth Orton’s music wholly unique and beloved. Guest guitar comes from Ben Harper and the video for the song has been directed by acclaimed American film maker Hal Hartley, the man responsible for cult classics ‘Trust’, ‘The Unbelievable Truth’ and ‘Amateur’. The video was filmed with Beth in New York in November.

B-sides are the awesomely gorgeous ‘I Love How You Love Me’ - a song written out of the famous Brill Building which was originally recorded by the Paris Sisters and produced by Phil Spector. Beth recorded her exquisite version for the soundtrack to British film ‘Mojo’. Haunting dirty blues track ‘Precious Maybe’ is a Beth Orton original and was recorded for the soundtrack to Irvine Welsh’s ‘Acid House Trilogy’. CD2 features a live version of former single ‘Touch Me With Your Love’ and acoustic version of brand new song ‘Stars All Seem To Weep’.

The new LP, ‘Central Reservation’, will be unleashed on the 15th March. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back Beth Orton. This time the world’s her oyster.

Orton's voice is still her meal ticket, cutting through the mix with all the rustic ache of Fairport Convention's legendary Sandy Denny. She rambles through arrangements, recalling woozy folk-rock nightmares like Big Star's Third or Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left: piano, strings, vibes, congas and a guitar with a bad case of the shakes. Only a couple of tunes use the grooves of Trailer Park, and they're the most dated-sounding tracks here. Orton spends most of the record wailing fabulously bleary love songs like "Sweetest Decline" and "Feel to Believe," and even when they end in tears, she makes you feel how much fun it is to drink ale at dawn with the boy with the cinnamon eyes. A true folkie magpie, she'll borrow melodies from anywhere she likes: John Lennon, Barbara Mason, even that Yes song about chess. Fans will miss the outreach of Trailer Park, but Central Reservation generates a special buzz of its own, and whenever Orton opens her mouth, she's bitching and bewitching, a space cowgirl with a stolen-car heart.

(RS 808) ROB SHEFFIELD

I have decided to set up a forum that discusses what will their collaboration sounds like. You can also go to NME website to view the article.

Meanwhile, the official website of Sessions on West 54th is featuring excerpts of the show on Beth Orton. One of them is an excerpt of her performance where she sings She Cries Your Name while the other two are excerpts of her interview with David Byrne. This week, they are giving away a Beth Orton screensaver. You can download the screensaver on their site. I couldn't put it here 'coz the screensaver is at a whopping 2.8 MB!!! Anyway, my Winzip doesn't seems to work so I do not have the opportunity to see it yet.

Here are part of the transcript of the interview, you can also it from the real video files:

DAVID BYRNE: You did some Lilith Fair dates. What was the vibe on that tour?

BETH ORTON: It was brilliant. The first day I was there I was sitting at a table with Phil Kaufman, having my lunch, didn't know who he was. And Emmylou Harris comes up to me and she's like, "Hi," and I'm like, "Hi." And then she tells me she really likes my songs and just sat with me and talked to me. It was amazing. And then came and saw my show that I did. It was just so friendly.

DAVID BYRNE: She listens to everything.

BETH ORTON: She's incredible. She seems to plant seeds of goodness wherever she goes. I just think she's really positive. She just exudes positivity. She's just amazing. She's so beautiful. So, that for me, made it. And she knew things like "Sugar Boy." She's like, "That's like an old blues song," and I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." It was mad. She really had listened to my record. It was amazing.

DAVID BYRNE: You just did a video with Hal Hartley. Would he tell you to stand and give you stage directions? Stand here, take two steps, look to the left?

BETH ORTON: Yes. Very much. Because of the story of the video, it had to be like that. Because there are three boom operators and it's all choreographed. It was brilliant. I loved it. And he is a brilliant director, obviously. But to actually be there, being directed by him, he is so succinct and it was just right. That is what makes a good director. He's a normal person and then he goes, "I want to do this." And he did it exactly, and then he just goes back to being a normal person.

DAVID BYRNE: Is it partly his body language?

BETH ORTON: Yeah, his body language is genius. It's so precise. When he goes into it, he goes into it. And all the people, the three actors, they were amazing. It was the best day.

DAVID BYRNE: When I saw you before you were with some strings. Do you do that from time to time or is that just for festivals?

BETH ORTON: No, it was constant. But we did a whole tour with loads of us. It was like Santana or something. Hundreds of people on stage. Brilliant. But this tour was just me and Ted doing it on our own. Doing an acoustic one, just for the hell of it really. Just doing it. Something about really parsing it out, and I just really wanted to do it and hear how it works like that. I think it works really well. It's like magic. It's like potions. It's like any ingredient you put in, anything else you put in it can just totally change it. But it's really good to take it right down and then see what I would add to it. We were about to go on tour, and again next year for six months or something. And it's thinking about how we're going to do it next, the elements for a live show. But, yeah, strings I'm sure will be back on board.

Here's a little writeup about Beth:

She's been variously described as "a bummed out angel in the badlands of love" (Details), "the clear eyed oracle of London's breakbeat scene" (Spin), and "Queen of the heartbreak vocal" (Mercury Music Prize judges). There must be something special about Beth Orton that makes people attempt poetry. Ever since her debut solo album Trailer Park was released to critical acclaim in October '96, people have been enchanted by the collection of lovingly crafted, beguiling songs, and entranced by the tall Norfolk broad with the acoustic guitar.

1997 was good to Beth. She worked with her all time hero, folk-jazz legend Terry Callier. She sung on the Chemical Brothers number one album Dig Your Own Hole. She toured America with Sheryl Crow and Emmy Lou Harris as part of the Lilith Fair, and performed to a packed-out-tent of 10,000 muddy Glastonbury-goers. She also scored her first Top Forty UK single with "She Cries Your Name," played a sold out UK tour, and had her own picture-perfect, dream-come-true moment, as she drove in a convertible down a sun-soaked Hollywood Boulevard and heard her own cover version of The Ronettes "I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine" played on K-ROQ- just before heading home to celebrate a Mercury Music Prize nomination for Album Of The Year. What more could await Beth Orton? Plenty!

At six foot tall and disarmingly sharp, Beth Orton is not exactly what you'd expect. With an ability to reduce grown men (and women) to tears with her songs, Beth is more likely to steal your last fag than cry on your shoulder. As she says, "I don't think my songs are as miserable as people make out. There's a lot of hope in there as well. It depends if you're a half-empty or half-full person." Born in Norfolk in 1970, Beth moved to London with her mother at the age of 14. Her older brothers being punk rockers, the most rebellious thing the teenage Beth could do was "get into folk." She spent her late teens immersed in everything, from Nick Drake to Dexy's, The Stone Roses and Rickie Lee Jones, before toying with the idea of acting, which led to a drama course at the LSU. After a couple of years in fringe theater, she hooked up with dance producer William Orbit for her first musical project, a cover of John Martyns "Don't Wanna Know About Evil." Working with Orbit for two years, she co-wrote the first two Red Snapper singles and teamed up with the (little known at the time) Chemical Brothers on "Alive:Alone," the haunting final track on the Brothers debut album.

Signed to Heavenly Recordings, Beth then set out on her solo career, blending her guitars with samples and beats on an album of starkly personal songs of breathtaking beauty. Working with producers Victor Van Vught (Tindersticks, Nick Cave) and Andrew Weatherall (producer of the classic "Screamadelica") she created her own brand of rhythm-infused folk. Trailer Park struck a chord with everyone-seasoned folkies, country aficionados, teenage clubbers and the broken-hearted, earning her the title (her favorite yet) of "The Comedown Queen." Happiest in charge, she led her new band on a year long road trek, first in support of The Beautiful South, John Martyn, John Cale, Mark Eitzel and Everything But The Girl, and then selling out her own headline tours.

The Best Bit e.p.-released in December 1997- was Beth's biggest UK chart success yet, as she hooked up with her musical hero Terry Callier. Its success won Beth two Brit Award nominations (Best British Female Artist and Best British Newcomer) and the e.p. went on to sell over 40,000 copies. Trailer Park soon went gold, and it seemed that suddenly the whole world was talking about Beth.

Here are some cool pics from the site:

This show airs on local PBS stations, and they can set their own date and time to show this program, so you will need to check you local listings to know for sure when it airs in your city. It could be a slightly different date in some places I do believe so check out the website to determine the time at your place:

http://www.sessionsatwest54th.com and look at "Station Listings".

http://www.billboard.com/feature/orton.html

Meanwhile the heading reads: Honesty Central To Beth Orton's Style. The article is written by Dylan Siegler.

HVN89CD
1. Stolen Car
2. I Love How You Love Me
3. Precious Maybe

HVN89CD2
1. Stolen Car (radio edit)
2. Stars All Seem To Weep (Shed version)
3. Touch Me With Your Love (acoustic)

My gut feeling told me that Touch Me With Your Love (acoustic) is the same song as the one featured in Best Bits EP (US Version). Meanwhile, Precious Maybe is one of the tracks featured in The Acid House soundtrack. The net's online vendors (CDNow, Music Blvd) does not seem to be taking any advance orders for any of Beth's lastest release yet. Anyway, with such irresistable tracks featured on the 2 singles, I think it's time we better pestered our local dealers to bring in her singles! These 2 singles will be released on 1st March unless they decide to delay it again. 

Bertelsmann AG

A. BMG Entertainment (over 200 music labels in more than 50 countries)

1. BMG Entertainment International
2. BMG Entertainment North America
(a) Recorded Music (Recording Company/labels and affiliates)
(i) RCA Records
(a)Loud Records (50% ownership-partnership)
(ii) Windham Hill Group
(iii) Arista Records
(a) LaFace Records (joint-venture)
(b) Bad Boy Entertainment (joint-venture)
(c) Deconstruction** (fully owned, but operated as independent entity)

(b) BMG Direct (Direct Marketing=music club memberships)
(c) BMG Distribution
(d) BMG Music Publishing
(e) BMG Video
(f) NiceMan Merchandising
(g) Storage Media(Sonopress, Topac

**Deconstruction merged with Dedicated Records in 1998. Heavenly Records is a subsidiary of Deconstruction.**

And here are the Deconstruction address in UK:

Deconstruction
Bedford House
69-79 Fulham High Street
London
SW6 3JW
tel: 0171 384 2298
fax: 0171 384 8017

e-mail: deconstruction@bmg.co.uk

You walked into my house last night 
Couldn't help but notice
A life that was long gone still burning strong
You were sitting your fingers like fuses
Your eyes was set on mine
You said you stand for every moment
You so ever threatened to everyone but you
Why should I know better by now
When I'm old enough not to

While every lust fails to land with love 
It never helped the meaning I was thinking of
And I can't decide all the right or wrong
I guess sometimes you need a place where you belong

Somewhere says the wrong words to the from my days
Little things like this could matter to me
Others feel that you should stand for
Every moment and of use to hand and
All the things they could never see
You said you stood for every moment of use
That was ever promised to anyone like you

While every lust fails to land with love 
It never helped the meaning I was thinking of
And I can't decide all the right or wrong
You left a feeling that I just do not belong

Wonder too many a joke gone too far 
I see a face driving a stolen car, yes
Harder to high when you are hitching a ride
Harder to high what you really saw
O yeah, you stand for every moment of use
That I never seen or head through
Don't I wish I knew better by now
When I think I'm starting to

When every lust fails to land with love
It never helped the meaning I was thinking of
And I lost the land between right or wrong
I just want to find a place where I belong

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