Beth Orton - Magazine Reviews.

Italicized items are new.

Quick quotes:

"One of the Most Delicate and Beautiful records of recent times" Total Guitar on Trailer Park

"Original and beguiling, intelligent and innovative" The Times on Trailer Park

"Think an English Riki Lee Jones and Primal Scream circa 'Trainspotting' and you'll come close to where Beth Orton is at. A truly rare talent ****". Click here for the full Xtra Review of Trailer Park.

"Jaw droppingly awesome. Glorious" The Independent on Trailer Park.

"To know Beth is to love her. Consider yourself introduced." Melody Maker on Trailer Park

"You will fall heavily for Trailer Park.... Gorgeous" Arena on Trailer Park

"A genuine talent" Music Week on Trailer Park

"Trailer Park is folk adrift in space. Stoned folk. Chill-out folk." - NME on Trailer Park

"Beth Orton has made an LP that blends 90s studio trickery with simple folksy pop." - MOJO on Trailer Park

"Central Reservation strums, but it also rocks, grooves and sooths." The Face, Jan 99

"Central Reservation is a lovely record: clear wistful songs and a mournful, fragile beauty with a hidden strength to boot." Red, Feb 99

BETH ORTON GIVES IT A REST

Beth Orton has been advised by doctors to take at least two months off following a recurrence of the illness that has plagued her for years, nme.com can reveal.

The move has led to the cancellation of a low-key Irish tour and all other promotional activities.

A spokesperson for Orton's record company Heavenly explained that the problems resurfaced last Friday (April 14), adding, "She'd just come off tour and went to hospital for one of her regular check-ups. She thought she was fine but the doctors immediately put her back on a strict diet and ordered her to take two months off.

"She's just worn out really. She has Crohn's Disease and it never goes away. I don't want to make it sound as though she's whining and always ill because she's not. She's been working working hard for two years but has this thing that rears from time to time and forces her to go on a diet that amounts to pretty much just rice."

Crohn's Disease effects the intestines and bowel, and eating certain foods can leave the sufferer in crippling pain.

The Heavenly spokesman said the tour had been organised by a friend of Orton's, and that he wasn't aware if there were any plans to reschedule the shows.

The five dates were to have kicked off in Cork on Thursday next (April 27) and taken in Kilkenny and Galway before finishing up in Belfast on May 3.

New Musical Express, April 2000

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?"

New Musical Express, 8th May 1999

Connecticut River Valley Advocate (Western Mass & CT), 1999

Songs for a Blue Guitar
Beth Orton ditches the dance floor on Central Reservation
By Michael Strohl

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.

Boston Globe, March 25th 1999

Beth Orton
Central Reservation
Arista

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

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

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...
A: They're all true.

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"?
A: I think it was just a progression from the last record. Getting deeper into it in some respects. I kind of like the idea of this sort of deconstruction at the end, getting rawer and rawer.

Q: And while your voice is important, it's simply one component of the complete sound.
A: I agree with that wholeheartedly. I always talk about my voice as "The Voice" [chuckles], not in a bad way, but because I want to use it as an instrument. I want to use it as a sound, and I want to be a part of the musicians and they do and the brilliant music they make around my songs.

Q: So what's your central reservation?
A: Lack of self-awareness. That's always a major problem.

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?"
A: No, That's quite poetically put, I think. I've read worse. I've sort of stopped reading it now.

Q: Do you generally like playing big festival gigs?
A. A gig's a gig to me. It's all reaching out and trying to connect with audiences, and a festival's a good way to do it because you get a huge cross-section of people that wouldn't necessarily get to hear your music. A festival's good. They're kind of scary, but they're good.

Q: Any survival tips for people who brave the heat and spend all day at the show?
A: Drink a lot of water. And always carry a light bulb.

First Person by Steve Darnall

SonicNet, 19th 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 Sat., June 19, 3:04 AM EDT

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."

BETH ORTON'S SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE

First Record You Can Remember

'Denis' - Blondie
"Does it have to be just one? There are so many, I don't really remember which one comes first. I do remember having the 'Magical Mystery Tour' single. And I also remember my brother coming home with 'Denis' by Blondie. We danced around to it for ages. Oh, and then there was 'Carmen' - the opera - which my mum bought for me because I loved it so much."

Record That Reminds You Of School

'I Feel Love' - Donna Summer
"'I Feel Love' reminds me of leaving school and going home and dancing around my bedroom to it over and over again. Then there was Madonna, when I was about 14 and went to school in London. I was really into 'Like A Virgin' and stuff. There were hundreds, really. Although it's not that relevant I don't suppose, since I didn't go to school much anyway."

Record You Fell In Love To

'Solid Air' - John Martyn
"I was at college with this boy - it was about the first time I smoked weed, as well, which might have something to do with it - but we used to listen to 'Solid Air' all the time. The sun would go down and the sun would come up and there we'd be, listening to John Martyn, snogging. It also reminds me of summer evenings running around in Cambridge, where he came from, on his motorbike. 'Don't Want To Know' from that LP is the first song I ever sang with William. So I suppose that marks the beginning of my love affair with music. Which is very important as it's the only thing I've ever really committed to in my life."

Heartbreak Tune

'All The King's Horses' - Aretha Franklin
"'All The King's Horses' could fit any heartbreak you wanted, really. Also 'Damaged' by Primal Scream. And anything by The The reminds me of all the heartbreaks I have had, will have, and should have had."

Record That Evokes The Greatest Summer Of Your Life

'Martha My Dear' - The Beatles
"'Martha My Dear' reminds me of the first summer I was ever really going out. Me and my friend would get ready to go out and get drunk, listening to the 'White Album'. Which might not be the best party album, but it's fucking good, so I don't care. It really reminds me of that summer at her house, and how much fun we had. But every summer is a good summer, really. And every summer is tinged with sadness. I might not have had the best summer of my life yet."

Record That Inspired You To Form A Band

'The New Folk Sound Of Terry Callier' - Terry Callier
"So many things inspired me. But I'd say the one that inspired me to get this particular band together and go on the road was Terry Callier. He uses two basses - and it's very melodic and very beautiful. I could also say The Stone Roses' first album, because I loved the sound and the rhythm. Something between those two, I'd say."

Record For A Night On The Tiles

Anything by RL Burnside
"I love the way that records by RL Burnside just build and build. I find it really exhilarating. I love the tension that's captured and how it breaks into complete joyous abandon."

Record Guaranteed To Clear The TourBus

Anything by Ellen Macawayne
"She does these mad, beautiful songs. She's got an incredible voice. But when she goes a bit mad she gets a bit too screamy and shouty for some people's taste."

New Year's Eve, 1999, What's On The Hi-Fi? 'Under The Influence Of Love' - Barry White

"'Under The Influence Of Love' is a good, uplifting tune, so it seems appropriate. It reminds me of the Heavenly Sunday Social, and having a good time."

Record You Would Like Played At Your Funeral

'Some Of Your Lovin'' - Dusty Springfield
"It's such a sweet kind of melancholy song. I don't know why, but I just really fucking love it. I love it when it comes in, I love it when it fades out. All of it. I can just imagine my coffin going through the curtain to that one. And there's another one, a really funny one. 'Shooba Doo', from this French TV programme called Raupatrouille, It's a silly song, and I think it would make anyone laugh. Even at something like a funeral."

New Musical Express, 1999

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

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."

New Musical Express, 13th March 1999

Beth Orton
Central Reservation (Heavenly)

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.

Select Magazine - April 1999

Beth Orton
Central Reservation
Heavenly

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

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 - Single of the Month

BETH ORTON
Stolen Car
Heavenly

"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"

Beth Orton Interview

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.

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."

From: Rolling Stone December 24, 1998 - January 7, 1999

Beth Orton
Trailer Park
Dedicated/Heavenly
Rating 9 (out of 10)

Beth Orton is an introspective London singer-songwriter whose haunted voice has earned her work with clubland gurus like William Orbit and the Chemical Brothers. Trailer Park is a folk-pop marvel, mixing Orton's accoustic guitar with a 90's backdrop of smoky dance beats--think Tricky's film-noir funk with a dose of acoustic Joni. "Tangent" features synth squiggles that sound as if she's borrowed the Captain from Tennille; "Touch Me With Your Love" is fabulously torchy trip-hop. Orton is bookish enough to swipe a lyric from Joseph Conrad, but she's earthy enough to keep you spellbound through a ten-minute sex 'n' death ballad called "Galaxy of Emptyness." Unrequited love is Orton's thing, and all eleven tracks on Trailer Park flow into a single opus, climaxing with a heartbroken cover of Ronnie Spector's "I wish I Never Saw the Sunshine." Orton represents a whole new style of trip-hop beauty: She's a bummed-out angle in the badlands of love.

Details Magazine June 1997 review of Beth Orton's Trailer Park, Reviewer: Rob Sheffield

Electronic music has no soul. Folk music is sappy. Drum machines are a cop out. Acoustic guitars are boring. Rock is dead. Disco sucks.

These are just a few of the platforms in the omniscient debate over electronica. Fortunately for the conoisseur who loves innovative music and has better things to do than argue apples and oranges, Beth Orton bridges the gap separating the opposing entities by touching down on each level. She soothes with an angelic voice while the music creates eerie atmospheres that transform lonesome ballads of woe into ethereal prophesizing. For anyone having doubt over which side of the line they stake claim, one listen to Orton's casual hybridization squelches all indecisiveness. Yes, you can have both, and Beth Orton's breezy grace demonstrates why compromise is necessary.

"It doesn't have to be one or the other, and it doesn't have to be both," she says. "It just IS. God, I sound like Calvin Klein commercial."

Well, maybe. The lanky, six-foot 26-year-old fits the mold of a CK model just as well if not better than, say, Royal Trux's Jennifer Herrema. On her debut Trailer Park, Orton's blend of distinct musics isn't forced like some bands overextendng themselves with multi-genre amalgamations. A collection ranging from mournful, acoustic folk to deep rolling electornic plains and all points in between, Trailer Park shows two sides of Orton: the lovelorn songstress a la Joni Mitchell, confessing her songs to you like cozy diary entries; and the mello, electronic diva singing above spacious aural settings. Everything about the album is soft, gentle, forgiving. Writing songs comes freely to Orton, her open heart pours with tear-jerking sentiment. Amidst a plunging bassline and drum-machine pattering, emotion is easily translated into drawn-out, heavenly howls. Tender pleas such as "Won't you please knock me off my feet, for awhile" from the album closer "Galaxy of Emptiness," create the perfect musical cyborg. Each note sung tickles the soul like a dove's feather, each warm
texture caresses it.

In addition to being the Jeckyll and Hyde of dance music, Trailer Park is also a lesson in downplayed studio gymnastics. Although the electronic work is beautiful, to Orton, the studio is just another instrument, the final step. An instrumental presence that's subtly nested in the background creating atmospheres instead of playing notes, it's a part of the song, it doesn't control it.

If the reason electronica hasn't taken off is because of its' facelessness and ambiguity, Beth Orton is capble of changing that. Counteracting the electronic backlash, she humanizes each song with emotion and beauty that, once heard, is impossible to forget. Though proud of her work, the songstress is humbly aloof about the larger role she's playing in today's music scene. A frontrunner in the burgeoning, cross-hatched acoustic/electro genre, she doubts her importance: "Me, I haven't opened any doors. I think they were opened before."

But after fruitless pondering over her doorman predecessors, she corrects herself. "Actually maybe I have opened the doors. Fuckin' hell, weird. Someone once said to me in a club one night, "You know what you've done, don't you? You've started something and you better make sure people know that you started it."

Her unique incorporation of dance grooves and folk memory stems from her almost backwards musical timeline. She's always loved singer/songwriters, Rickie Lee Jones ("I love the ways she writes songs, I love her words"), Neil Young, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley and the like. And though she wrote many songs on her acoustic guitar, she never thought of playing with a full band. She never went to rock shows; the London underground dance scene was her hang, eventually meeting and working with William Orbit on Strange Cargo and the Chemical Brothers, adding vocals to Exit.Planet.Dust's "Alive:Alone" and Dig Your Own Hole's "Where Do I Begin."

Her opportunity to record with a band came in the form of Red Snapper, an acoustic hip-hop collective. (Red Snapper's Ali Friend plays upright bass and co-wrote most of Trailer Park) "That was a really interesting experience because previously I've only been in the studio, one on one with a machine," Orton recalls. Now suddenly, there was a band! Bass and guitars all playing at once and recording it live. Me singing live with the band. No drop-ins. No chop your vocals up because it's better that way. [When we were finished recording.] I was like, 'don't you now want to totally chop my vocals and put it back together.' When they said no, I thought, 'wow, how exciting is that.' Like a real performance."

Saddled with tons of cred thanks to Orton's associaton with the respected UK underground, Trailer Park won critic's raves in England and is starting to perk the ears of US audiences. "This American thing couldn't have happened at a better time," she says of the recent media frenzy surrounding her NYC press day. "After I made the album, I couldn't even listen to it. I just could not have anything to do with it. Then last night at a meeting at the record company [Dedicated], they wre playing it. I didn't leave the room, I didn't get all weird. I just didn't care. I thought, 'Fuck, that sounds really good. Wow, yeah, that's nice, I like that."

"Everyone told me that by the time I got to America, I'd be really bored of my album, and I'd have to keep going. But really, I've just fallen in love with it."

Orton is able to roll with whatever she's presented with, be it a studio, full band or captive audience. At a recent hype-less gig at Arlene's Grocery in NYC, the visibly nervous Orton calmed down once her soulful echoing took effect on the room packed with critical those in the know. Now that the pre-release fear concerning Trailer Park has subsided, like a frightened kitten in a tree about to be rescued, Orton's proud that she made it that high but apprehensive about her acceptance into the arms of strangers. "That part of it [the album], I don't worry about," she says. "To me, doing the gig is worrying enough. I just want the songs to come across. I'm just a method for them to come out. I have to be as good as I can to let them be as good as they can." Judging from her performance that night, Orton's presence is a perfect giftbox for her broken-hearted gems.

Though her music is a testament to the inbreeding of electronica and traditioal guitar-based muic, Orton's a club kid deep down, staunchly defending the soul of electronica to an antagonistic journalist at the drop of a beat. "Dance music is a really weird thing," she explains. "It came out and it was really cold, faceless. Then people started to put face to it, and started to put voice to it. But even if it didn't have a voice, it's still got its own heart and soul, and in a way, it's quite a natural thing."

But what about those who say that electronica is killing rock?

"Technophobia is rife. When dance music came in, it was like, 'Fucking hell, fucking hell, computers are taking over the world,'" she says in mock panic. "At one point in 1988, we thought we'd all be walking around in spacesuits, didn't we? Actually what we ended up wearing was shell suits, do you know what I mean.

"[Dance music's] got its own heart and soul on one hand, and it's very cold on the other. To give it a voice, a human voice, can actually be more of a lie because you can't mess with what's there. You can't pretend that it's not a computer at the end of the day.

"What I'm trying to say is that I'm not trying to add a heart to dance music, I'm just playing with what's already there."

Interview from Smug Magazine, painstakingly typed by Chris Beckwith.

Beth Orton - Trailer Park

"When you get right down to it, I really shouldn't like the debut album from British singer/songwriter Beth Orton nearly as much as I do. After all, Orton appears to be a folkie at first glance, and we're talking "folkie" of the classic Joni Mitchell or Bobbie Gentry variety. Acoustic guitars abound, earnest vocals appear at every turn, and even a floating flute line soars across Orton's musical horizon.

But Orton, who first made a name for herself working with leading British electronic artists like William Orbit and the Chemical Brothers, avoids the pitfalls that have trapped many a lesser folksy songstress by mixing her sweet melodies with healthy doses of strings, psychedelic samples, and even near-funky grooves. Some songs eschew acoustic guitars entirely, instead using electronic instruments to construct strangely compelling soundscapes that even Tricky would be proud of.

Trailer Park starts off with the irresistable "She Cries Your Name," with its slurring violins and soaring flutes mixing with danceable beats and Orton's multi-tracked vocals to create a hypnotic Eastern feel that had my wife singing the melody to herself after one cursory listen. "Tangent" loses the guitars entirely, instead using trippy ambient sounds, psychedelic effects, and a repetitive dub-like bassline to create a sizzling backdrop for Orton's charming, lilting voice. "Don't Need a Reason" switches up the groove entrely with its lushly orchestrated folk balladry, while "Sugar Boy" uses a "Walk On the Wild Side" bassline, rimshot-heavy drums, and swirling organs to create a good old-fashioned pop song. Nearly every other song is just as powerful, but the albums's high point has to be the heartwrenching cover of Ronnie Spector's "I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine," an achingly melancholy ballad that will simply tear you apart. Look, I realize that I'm practically gushing here, but when's the last time you found a record that your 72-year-old grandmother loved almost as much as you did?"

From "Scholastic Rock", July 1997

Beth Orton: Electronica unplugged

Beth Orton

"Trailer Park"

(Heavenly/Deconstruction)

I was intrigued by this recording before I listened to the disc. It was given to me by the man that represents Deconstruction here in America. Deconstruction is a British label that specializes in electronica (you know, electronic dance music).

I got into reviewing electronic music for one magazine and now I can't get away from the stuff. I'm the least likely authority on the subject, but I keep getting this type of music sent to me in the mail. Some of the magazines and newspapers that I write for actually want record reviews of the latest ambient, trip-hop, jungle, drum 'n' bass and the rest of it, so I comply.

This record does not fit into any of those categories. There is some electronic music on Beth Orton's record, but not much. She is more of a British folkie than anything else. Orton is young and talented and she has actual strings on this record. I don't like to compare artists, but I must admit her voice is slightly reminiscent of Sinead O'Conner's.

The thing that drew me to Orton was the youthful innocence that is conveyed on her album. I believe that Orton's "Trailer Park" is available in the United States as an import only. I imagine that even then it is hard to find because Deconstruction is distributed by RCA Records and they have other things on their mind. RCA is part of the BMG music group. BMG is a fairly huge operation. They will spend $50,000 publicizing the Dave Matthews Band at the South By Southwest Music Seminar before they make Beth Orton's record available domestically.

I imagine that writing this review won't make a bit of difference. Still, the record sounds very nice and it isn't electronica. Wistful harmonies, very melodic songs and very few beats per minute. Acoustic guitars, strings, double bass, mandolins and one lovely voice. No electronica, not tonight... I've got a headache. (Mitch Myers)

From ExtraRAW, 19th February 1997.

SHE CRIES YOUR NAME (Beth Orton)

After three near-misses Beth Orton finally gets her head above water and charts a single inside the Top 40. {Well, let's be honest here, she made number 40... - ed.} Despite the critical acclaim for her debut album massive commercial success has so far not been forthcoming. Hopefully this profile-raising chart appearance and her forthcoming bookings on most of the summer festivals will change all this.

From Dot-Music Chart Pages, 14 June 1997.

BETH ORTON

Folk with traces of Trip Hop

It's been a long time since British folk music has been cool, but Heavenly's latest signing Beth Orton is about to change all that. Armed with songs that marry influences from the quality end of folk with trip hop dynamics, the 25-year-old Norwich-born singer is a welcome enigma. Her debut single, She Cries Your Name, just failed to make the Top 75, but Heavenly is happy to take a relaxed approach to marketing. "We don't want to force it down people's throats, we want people to come to it," says Heavenly's head of A&R Martin Kelly, about Orton's debut album Trailer Park. "Everyone that's heard it has really picked up on it, so I think we'll just have a gradual build," he adds. "We're not expecting it to go straight into the top five."

A female singer/songwriter with clear Sandy Denny and Nick Drake influences might seem thoroughly atypical of a label that is home to Northern Uproar, St Etienne, Monkey Mafia and Espiritu, but Kelly doesn't think that way. He says, "There is no typical Heavenly act. It's always been, and will continue to be, really eclectic, with the emphasis on quality pop".

Her Heavenly releases aren't Orton's first foray into music into music, as she was previously a voice-for-hire who added her haunting monochrome vocal to a variety of dance projects. She co-wrote and appeared on songs with William Orbit and Red Snapper and, in 1994, joined with The Chemical Brothers, singing on Alive Alone, the finale to their Exit Planet Dust album. "William Orbit came to see a play I was in," recalls Orton. "He wanted me to read on this song for him but, when I got to the studio I was a bit pissed, so I sang..."

Five years later, Orton is revelling in the artistic consequences of that drunken indulgence, with Trailer Park, an album she claims is more of a collaboration than a solo project. "I didn't tell the musicians I brought in with me what to do," she says. "I gave them the feel of the song and ideas of how I wanted them to go, but the only reason I brought all these people together was to see what would happen."

Playing on Trailer Park is bassist Ally Friend (Red Snapper), Junctions' guitarist Ted Barnes, and Sandal's drummer Will Blanchford.

As a result, an album of many moods has emerged. There is a melange of folk and subtle electronica that's had its eccentricities pronounced by the two producers at the helm, Victor Van Vught and Andrew Weatherall. "It was really important to me when I recorded Trailer Park to achieve the diversity", says Orton. "At the time, I was just schizoid and I didn't want to be seen as a hippy-dippy-girlie-folky-singer. It's just the way I am, everything I like is really different and I just wanted to do everything I could on one album. I think that's the way it always is with people who are a bit inexperienced... you just have to go for it."

by Lee Henshaw, Dot Music Talent, October 1996.

BETH ORTON
She Cries Your Name
(Heavenly)

SPOOKY VIOLA. Brrr. Er, ’plucky’ guitar. Grimly gorgeous vocaIistic torpor like we used to hear from Joni Mitchell when she was off her rocker and peaked too soon shortly thereafter. Wafty flutey bits invoking the word ’workshop’. Slight yodel-esque inflections invoking, far more worryingly, the words ’Dolores Cranberry’. Beth is a gifted folk minstrel and more to be appreciated in the album format during a long dark night of the soul when you’re convinced life is pain and joy the most transient of all emotions and t there’s no real point to anything at all and realising you are absolutely right.

From New Musical Express, 7 June 1997

BETH ORTON

Trailer Park

Heavenly HVNLP 17

"East Anglian Beth Orton's loquacious warble may already be familiar from vocal outings with the likes of William Orbit and The Chemical Brothers - such clubbable credentials explaining the contribution of DJ and mix maestro Andrew Weatherall as one of the two producers here. Weatherall's loopy trip-hop-lite flavours dominate on Tangent, Touch Me With Your Love and Galaxy of Emptiness, while erstwhile Bad Seeds soundman Victor Van Vught brings a less obtrusive folk feel to the rest of the proceedings. Orton responds to the unplugged ambience with some keening vocal performances: on I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine she pitches up in Natalie Merchant territory, while the lovelorn She Cries Your Name drifts only a blonde hair's breadth from Judie Tzuke-style melifluence. An engaging, if stylistically schizophrenic, debut. * * *"

David Sheppard, Q Magazine, November 1996.

Beth Orton

"Every so often, something you hear pulls that little bit harder on the heartstrings, gets that bit closer to emptying the tear ducts, makes that shier & tingle resonate with a bigger pulse through your soul. Whether it be the wall of sound beauty of "Be My Baby", the speed rush of 'Born To Run"; the first time you heard "White Man In Hammersmith Palais" or "Weekender".

Seeing a girl sat, plucking away at an acoustic in the upstairs room of a boozer, singing from the depths of her soul rates pretty highly next to these thrills, these moments that fire up the soul. The girl, Beth Orton, may seem like the most unassuming young lady you could hope to meet. Give her 30 minutes with a 6 string & you're hers forever...

Beth Orton was born December 1970 & drifted through her teens in a musical haze of Terry Callier, Neil Young, Nick Drake, Stone Roses, Rolling Stones, Carol King, Rickie Lee Jones, her early '20's immersed in everything from Radiohead to TLC. Beth's first musical project was a one off single was a cover of John Martyn's "Don't Wanna Know About Evil", recorded with William Orbit under the name of Spill. Her relationship with Mr. Orbit carried on with the Strange Cargo project, where Beth co-wrote "Water From A Vine Leaf", (from Strange Cargo 3 & on single in remixed pure throbbing techno monster form, reconstructed by Underworld). She first came to the public eye guesting with Red Snapper on their first two singles. Beth featured on their first single, "Snapper" & co-wrote & sang on their second single (the 10 minute psycho blues track "In Deep"). Through the William Orbit days & onto working with Snapper, the basis of the songs has always just been acoustic guitar & vocals, leaving their roots exposed even when underpinned by burbling techno pulses or sampled breakbeats.

Summer 1995 & a bandless Beth holes up with a bunch of mad mates in a dingy rehearsal room off Holloway Road. The mates, who made up the backbone of Primal Scream (guitarist Andrew Innes, keyboard man Martin Duffy & bass player 'H'), mucked about on a bunch of songs, remodeling & restructuring, shaping the musical direction of "Live As You Dream" & nursing sore heads daily. In the Autumn of 1994, Beth hooked up with The Chemical Brothers while they were on a hunt for someone to do justice to a set of lyrics they had written. After a few hours in the studio, "Alive:Alone" had been completed, with Beth sprinkling pure warmth & soul over the top of a warped slo-mo backing track. "Alive...' became the last track on the hugely successful Chemical Brothers debut album, "Exit Planet Dust" (which has since gone on to sell 150,000 copies in Britain alone).

Over the last year, Beth's ambition has been to return her songs to a 'genuine source' & to 'not just put a drum machine behind it'. Of this, Beth says "It's been a bigger challenge to sit there all bare & naked instead of hiding behind a name producer or a trendy remixer". With a band that creates wild, textured music, Beth Orton has tried to prove that you don't have to use bleeps, breaks & big beats to create very modern & very soulful music.

Just get prepared to have your heart broken.."

Review from Anglo Plugging web-site.