Beth Orton Was Brilliant. And She’s Back. And Coming To New Zealand!

Friday is fun. It's music. So there's a playlist, and links to other albums and YouTube clips and today I revisit Beth Orton's best work ahead of her NZ shows in November. Stoked about that.

Earlier this week it was announced that Beth Orton will return to New Zealand for a couple of shows; her first here in a decade. In fact, just yesterday, the tickets went on sale. Get in now!

Orton made her name in the mid/late 1990s as part of a scene labelled “folktronica”. She was singing her own songs, with acoustic guitar and subtle electronica flourishes beneath. But she was also collaborating with people like William Orbit and The Chemical Brothers. Her voice was your post-rave comedown. And it was perfect. Her songs were ever so slightly magical.

I got my first record store job when her solo debut proper (actually her second album – but it was very much her international launching pad) Trailer Park was really blowing up. Our store was open late at night every night, and Beth Orton was the sort of thing you could play at 10am or 10pm or at any point between – it filled the store with good vibes, and we sold a truck (and trailer) load of it.

Heaps of people seemed to think she was the Beth from Portishead (that would actually be Beth Gibbons). In the early days of the internet, they looked similar enough, were from the same country, floated in similar-enough circles, etc. We’d correct the odd customer and point out the confusion. Others we might just let the truth go for a walk and let them believe they had a solo album by the Portishead singer. It wasn’t that we were misinforming them for a sale. It was that we couldn’t be bothered to correct them when they came back in, elated, with this new wisdom that “Beth from Portishead had done a really good solo album”. And look, when I was a teenager, I thought J.J. Cale was John Cale from The Velvet Underground for a bit. And no one got hurt. It used to happen before we could fact-check and myth-bust absolutely everything on our phones.

The songs from Trailer Park floated on over to compilations as “Chill Out” and “Acoustic Chill” and “Folktronica” and “Café Culture” and other dubious marketing taglines popped up like pimples on the face of music retail. But the music was good. And Beth Orton had hits. They weren’t big radio hits, at least not to my knowledge. But it was music for all sorts of cool crowds. And you didn’t have to be too cool to be on board with it. It was music for everyone. But it didn’t feel like it was lazy or easy, she was writing sophisticated songs that seemed to fill the gap between Suzanne Vega and Joni Mitchell for me. And that was the space I very much loved. I was big on Heather Nova and Natalie Merchant and Tori Amos and Mary Lou Lord and all sorts of things around that time. And some of those names are still ones I dial up straight away, and others have disappeared along with the majority of my physical music collection.

But Beth Orton was a mainstay for years. And for many reasons. She namedropped Bert Jansch and Fred Neill and John Martyn and Terry Callier and Nick Drake. She would later collaborate with Callier and Jansch. And cover Leonard Cohen. And she was always referencing the “correct” things. But it never felt forced. It just felt like a person with great taste and a good musical education.

And her second album, Central Reservation was even better than Trailer Park. Listen to it now (as I have been just recently). It’s a mini masterpiece actually. It’s somehow both entirely of its era and so very evoking of that late-90s culture, and yet also beguilingly ageless; timeless. Again, it comes down to the songs. Great, great tunes. Sure, there’s production assistance from Ben Watt (Everything But The Girl) and the great Dr John is there on piano, the not-so-great Ben Harper sits in on his whacky-slide guitar too (but this was the peak of Harper’s fame, so, again, era-evoking). But really, it’s all about those hooks, that voice, and those songs. The talent that Beth brings.

Orton was somehow John and Beverly Martin and Terry Callier and Suzanne Vega and Nick Drake and Sandy Denny all at once. She had that great pastoral English folk thing happening. But it was updated with all the right pre-millennium tension/s.

Central Reservation was still an album to namedrop/needle-drop when I took up my second gig working in a record store. And shortly after, her third album, the still-decent Daybreaker dropped. This time the name-du-jour collaborator was Ryan Adams. Ben Watt was still behind the desk. And names like Badly Drawn Boy were her contemporaries in the recording sphere. The songs still reached compilations and made it onto film and TV soundtracks.

That was the initial, golden run. The next decade saw motherhood, a break from the industry, and then a toe back in the water.

I haven’t loved every album she’s made, but I’ve always loved those first three.

And then, just when I thought there was no real need to keep checking in on the new Beth Orton albums, last year, she released Weather Alive. It’s her best album in forever. It was one of my favourite albums by anyone last year. And it’s still blowing my mind. It’s just an amazing listening experience, with such perfect sonics, such a mood that is built and sustained across it; it’s one of those albums like Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs or Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece or Marianne Faithfull’s Vagabond Ways or Natalie Merchant’s Motherland where it feels so wholly representative, and yet it’s just a little bit out in the woods and on its own. One of those albums you feel lucky to know about – sure, loads of others know about it too, but it just isn’t going to be paraded around for and by everyone. And that only makes it all the better.

But Weather Alive has had rave reviews. I couldn’t pull the words together to do it justice. It just leaves me with my jaw on the ground. I was going through my own little crisis around reviewing when this album was released. And it was one of the ones I played on a loop in my headphones, and jus retreated from the world. I just love trying to burrow deep inside these songs. To write about it and place it under the ether rag, to pin it to the wall, just felt wrong. These songs are still breathing. They’re still planning to go some places. And I didn’t need to ruin that by raving about it to reach a word count. I just liked visiting the space those songs took me. I still do.

But, yeah, what news to hear that Orton is coming back to town.

I saw her way back in the day. When she just had the two big records to her name really. She played a blinder. It was superb. And I still think about that gig from time to time. It was perfect in its way.

I checked out the setlists of the tour and it seems the focus is the new album – of course. And how lucky we are that that is the case. But also, the only other songs being offered are a handful of tunes each from Trailer Park and Central Reservation. So, if you know the name and you’re currently reading this while sitting on the fence, come down. Between now and November you really only need to get to know three albums – and I’ve shared them all in this newsletter entry. And they’re all superb!

I’ve also drafted up a playlist based on the set of her most recent gig, a European date from just a few days ago. Have at it.

That’s your primer. For Beth Orton. It’s going to be one of the very best gigs of the year. One of the last before Christmas. And a must, as far as I’m concerned.

So that’s the music and memories for today.

And of course there’s more music – beyond Beth Orton – in this week’s regular playlist, by my count it is Vol. 131 of the continuing saga. And it has its own groove. But it’s largely Beth Orton Adjacent, some calming, country/ish chill…Urgh, I felt a little sick just writing that. Reminds me why I escaped music retail and regular music reviewing.

But hey, have at it. And share your favourite Beth Orton moods, memories, moments, and songs below – or any other recommendations of what you’re listening to, or gigs you’re exciting about seeing.

And happy Friday. Happy weekend. As always, thanks so much for reading down to this line at the bottom. And then this one that follows.

I appreciate your time. And I think you have great taste in how you choose to waste some of it on t’internet.