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“Weather Alive”

Best New Track

May 31, 2022

Beth Orton sings “Weather Alive,” the title track off her first album in six years, like she’s summoning a spirit. Her voice sounds broken and determined, cresting in a chorus that flows with the emotional cadence of an old soul song: “Almost makes me want to cry/The weather’s so beautiful outside,” she sings, blending the words together to communicate their message with her delivery alone. Her accompanists—jazz musicians Alabaster dePlume , Tom Skinner, Shahzad Ismaily, and Tom Herbert—follow her lead, setting the mood with a slow-burning drone, textured with Talk Talk ’s dying-fire sparks of electric guitar and the swelling smoke rings of Van Morrison ’s Astral Weeks . As the music rises against the ragged pulse of her vocals, the English artist, nearly 30 years into her career, constructs an entirely new landscape for her songwriting—a wide-open space that grows stranger and more beautiful the further inside she leads us.

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English singer/songwriter Beth Orton’s latest album Weather Alive was one of the most critically acclaimed records of 2022, landing on year-end 'Best of 2022' lists from NPR, Pitchfork, and The New York Times—the latter of which praised Orton for her “modal vocal phrases and marveling [stories]." Pitchfork also named the title track a Best New Track, calling it “a slow-burning tour de force,” while The Late Late Show with James Corden invited Orton and her band to perform album highlight "Fractals."

Orton self-produced Weather Alive, laying the foundations of the album on an upright piano that she installed in her garden shed at home in London. When the time was right, Orton invited an incredible group of collaborators to join her across the album's eight tracks, including jazz poet Alabaster DePlume, The Smile drummer Tom Skinner, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily and Mercury Prize nominated bassist Tom Herbert of The Invisible. The musicians locked naturally into Orton’s sensibilities, expanding the emotive and dream-like world she'd created and conjuring a deeply meditative atmosphere that remains long after the final note has evaporated.

Orton has long been regarded as possessing one of the most unique and expressive voices in music – a voice that has grown evermore rich and wise over time. Her 1996 debut, Trailer Park, pioneered a synthesis of electronic and acoustic sounds, while its 1999 follow-up, Central Reservation, garnered international success. Further albums like the Jim O’Rourke-produced Comfort of Strangers and 2016’s largely electronic Kidsticks co-produced by Orton deepened the breadth of her craft. A turbulent life that progressed with long periods of ill health slowed her down and made for experience that she was only able to process through music. She began to spend more time making music at the piano than on guitar and the songs she wrote turned into the eight-track Weather Alive, the first album she’s ever self-produced in her nearly 30-year career.

“Music has always worked as a way of seeing,” she says. “I found myself writing until the words lost sense, which is really scary in the real world but really interesting when you’re making music. It gives all meaning new meaning. One of the most exciting elements of writing songs is how they reveal their truth as the process develops.” Indeed, the first notes of the album-opening title track usher the listener into an expansive, emotive and dream-like world of sound with little precedence in Orton’s prior work. The artist challenged herself to create music accordingly. Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden or Alice Coltrane come to mind at times throughout the record.

“I had brought myself a cheap old piano but it had a resonance that really spoke to me, almost an emotional resonance. I could explore in a way I wasn’t able to on guitar — I was able to find a depth, a voice I’d never trusted before. I worked with the atmosphere the piano created as an instrument in and of itself.” On producing she enthused “It wasn’t about proving myself to myself. That would be reductive, but in the end I did find capabilities I wasn’t aware I held. This was a collaboration between my unconscious self and some wonderful musicians and the piano was the constant anchor.”

The musicians locked naturally into Orton’s sensibilities, expanding the new sonic world she’d created. “Every person it attracted brought their sensitivity and love, and I think responded to the vulnerability,” she says. This intuitive interplay is best heard on songs like “Fractals,” “That track is a beautiful example of the nature of collaboration, where people come to the songs as they are, why else would I want to work with them unless I love what they bring,” she says. “I would not have been able to conjure that music without these musicians.”

In time, additional players helped add nuance and color to the music, including Shahzad Ismaily on guitar, drums, harmonica, bass and Moog, Sam Beste on vibraphone, Francine Perry on synths and Alabaster dePlume on saxophone. “Diving into what they brought was really magical,” says Orton. “The palette I had to play with was exquisite, and the players were extraordinary.” Working remotely from her garden, Orton took everything that had been played and spent four months sculpting the raw materials into what has become the final record.

Even when the lyrics lean into stream of consciousness, Orton’s signature storytelling is on frequent display throughout Weather Alive, from the warm, Proust-referencing “Friday Night” (“Though we never do get too close, I still hold you now and then,” Orton sings) and the bittersweet recollections of “Arms Around a Memory” (“Didn’t we make a beautiful life in your eighth-floor walkup that night?”) to the shimmering ambivalence of the seven-minute closer “Unwritten” (“I was sure we made a promise, but you never know”).

“This record explores all of that. I’m talking about my experiences possibly in a more personal way then I ever have but the important part will be how this music makes other people feel. It’s not a finished masterpiece, it is a collaboration with time, of someone struggling to make sense. And in that struggle, something beautiful got made.”

Digital Tracklist

• Weather Alive
• Friday Night
• Haunted Satellite
• Forever Young
• Arms Around a Memory

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Beth Orton Takes In a Gorgeous Day on Serene New Song ‘Weather Alive’

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

English singer-songwriter Beth Orton has returned with a mesmerizing new song, “Weather Alive” — the title-track from what will be her first album in six years. The LP is set to arrive Sept. 23 via Orton’s new label, Partisan Records.

“Weather Alive” finds Orton crafting a sprawling soundscape filled with roaming piano, a lush mix of synths, and a steady shuffle of drums. Orton’s vocals provide the perfect ethereal glue as she drifts back-and-forth between spoken word and singing: “It almost makes me wanna cry/The weather’s so beautiful outside/Almost makes me wanna cry/The weather’s so beautiful outside.”

Weather Alive is the first album that Orton has produced entirely on her own, crafting the project at her home studio in London. To complete the project, she enlisted the help of several collaborators including the Smile drummer Tom Skinner, the Invisible bassist Tom Herbert, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, and jazz poet Alabaster dePlume.

“Through the writing of these songs and the making of this music, I found my way back to the world around me, a way to reach nature and the people I love and care about,” Orton said in a statement. “This record is a sensory exploration that allowed for a connection to a consciousness that I was searching for. Through the resonance of sound and a beaten up old piano I bought in Camden Market while living in a city I had no intention of staying in, I found acceptance and a way of healing.”

Weather Alive marks Orton’s eighth studio effort and follows her 2016 album, Kidsticks . She has a bunch of tour dates scheduled around Europe and the U.K. this summer, including a run opening for Alanis Morissette.

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Beth Orton: Weather Alive album review — languorous and melodic

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Beth Orton: Weather Alive [Album Review]

Brian Q. Newcomb | October 3, 2022 October 3, 2022 | Reviews

Beth Orton Weather Alive Partisan Records [2022]

When Beth Orton came on the scene in the mid-nineties with her mix of folk and electronica, aided by then boyfriend and producer William Orbit, it was her distinctive vocals and provocative poetic lyrics that made her music special. The British singer/songwriter went on to collaborate with the techno band The Chemical Brothers, made a couple albums in the alternative folk vein, was one of those performing songs for the tribute concert film Leonard Cohen; I’m Your Man (2006), and sang a duet with Nick Cave at an Allen Ginsberg tribute concert in 2015, the same year she played the lead in the British indie film, Light Years . While Orton has shared production responsibilities in the past, she’s the sole producer of Weather Alive , her eighth studio album, and her first since 2016’s Kidsticks .

On her bandcamp page, Orton describes this latest project as a “sensory exploration” inspired by the purchase of an old “cheap, crappy” upright piano she picked up in the Camden Market. “Through the resonance and sound of a beaten-up old piano,” Orton found “acceptance and a way of healing” that she communicates in the “deeply meditative atmosphere” and the yearning of her voice. While the songs she’s written emanate from the cautious smattering of piano notes and her vocals, Orton calls on mutli-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, jazz drummer Tom Skinner (The Smile), bassist Tom Herbert (The Invisible), and Alabaster dePlume on sax. Her piano lines are sprinkled throughout, often in a loop, or as accents, creating the feel of a moody, jazz improvisation even though the individual contributions of the musicians were recorded separately in the pandemic. It’s Orton’s meticulous production, and artistic vision that brings it all together as a lush atmospheric meditation.

With titles like “Haunted Satellite” and “Lonely” you get a sense of the moody space that Orton occupies but it’s her thoughtful use of language and cautious vocal delivery that elevates her perceptions to art. In “Lonely” she asks, “Will you be the Welsh choir on the wind/All roaring and swearing at the ocean?/Will you be the ash of a well-tended fire?/Will you be the ambush of my desire?” Only to conclude that “Lonely, lonely, lonely likes my company.” Even when she repeats a word again and again, as she does at the end of “Lonely,” singing that title word repeatedly, each time it’s said with attention to its meaning and the underlying emotions that give it purpose. Orton’s vocals can sound hesitant at times, or broken, or flow over the melody effortlessly, at times it feels like she’s breathing each phrase with meaning born of the moment, the melody an improvisation as the words find shape with each breath.

While not jazz, per se, Orton’s interaction with the music, at times reverberates with the same energy as Joni Mitchell’s later, jazzier creations, although the mood and vocal delivery are completely of her own creation. In the title track, Orton is swept up in appreciation for the natural world of her experience: “Almost makes me wanna cry/The weather’s so beautiful outside.” The piano notes floating in the sea of sound, you can almost feel the wind in the song’s rhythms. The saxophone is used less frequently but dePlume is an asset wherever his presence is felt, especially on “Arms Around A Memory.” In “Fractals,” the one song in 8 where the rhythm section percolates, it sounds as if there’s a quick interplay of repeated notes either on a marimba or keyboard, with Orton’s wordless vocals floating as dePlume imitates the melody. It’s a form of musical alchemy that matches Orton’s lyric, where “you start to believe in magic.”

KEY TRACKS “Weather Alive” / “Lonely” / “Fractals”

ARTISTS WITH SIMILAR FIRE The Weather Station / Joni Mitchell / Mitski

BETH ORTON LINKS Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp | Partisan Records

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LIVE: Beth Orton – Weather Alive tour

30 April 2024 – The Tivoli, Brisbane – words by Cecilia Pattison-Levi

Beth Orton  has returned to Australian shores (or ‘parts’ as she said) and the  Tivoli  after her scheduled gigs from last year were re-scheduled to April. This gig was the last performance of her  “Weather Alive”  tour across Australia and New Zealand.

I last saw Beth Orton perform in Canberra in 2017 when she came south after playing Vivid in Sydney. She was playing songs from her then most recent album Kidsticks . And, at that time her voice and musical style was changing. In 2024, she has changed even more. The voice that launched the Brit-pop adjacent ‘folktronic’ sound is not the same. However, it is important to realise that the vocal aspect of Orton’s work is not the most important feature of her music. 

The thing about watching a Beth Orton musical display is her love of the ensemble performance experience with the focus on melodies and arrangements carefully crafted and delivered by her and her team of musicians. Her musicians on this tour were James Gilligan (bass and violin), Jesse Chandler (synth, sax, flute, oboe, piano and backing vocal duties) and Ben Sloan drummer, percussionist, piano). These multi-instrumentalists were outstanding and delivered the vision in the stripped back versions of the songs but giving them a full sound – and the voice is just one instrument amongst many.

Orton started the set with tracks from her critically acclaimed album Weather Alive released in 2022: the title track, ‘Friday Night’ and ‘Fractals’.   Orton was behind her keyboard, her voice more ragged sounding, but just another part of the soundscape being created by her amazing band. She then came to the standing microphone with her guitar and played some older tracks from the Sugaring Season , Daybreake r, Central Reservation  and  Trailer Park :  ‘Paris Train’, ‘Mystery’, ‘Central Reservation’, ‘Pass In Time’ and ‘She Cries Your Name’.

The tracks from Weather Alive are more like her original songs and she made famous in the late 1990s and it was so obvious when listening to the fabulous ‘Lonely’ and ‘Haunted Satellite’. The encore delivered the tracks the audience really wanted to here: the ‘Sweetest Decline’ and ‘Stolen Car ’ .

Listening to Orton and experiencing her live music now is not the same as listening to the sweet comedown queen of those must-have 90s albums. In 2024, listening to her is to hear a wiser, older, cracked chanteuse-like voice with songs that she has re-arranged and stepped down. Her performance was also more low-key and the band seemed to be enjoying themselves. Orton even said to a questioning audience member: “Well! I am having fun. I am not sure what you are doing.” Maybe it was that end of tour relief and looking forward to her holiday in Byron Bay but the vibe in the Tivoli was happy and content. I think Orton was genuinely surprised by the love from the crowd.  

Beth Orton and her band put on a subtle and skilled musical experience that was at times hypnotising and vulnerable. It was wonderful.

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Weather Alive

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Beth orton – weather alive, captivating contemporary experiences.

Presented by Melbourne Recital Centre and Frontier Touring

BRIT Award and Mercury Prize winning singer Beth Orton performs acclaimed album Weather Alive in her first Australian tour in six years.

Many musicians turn inward when the world around them seems chaotic and unreliable. Reframing one’s perception of self can often reveal new personal truths both uncomfortable and profound, and for Beth Orton, music re-emerged as a tethering force even when her own life felt more tumultuous than ever. After struggling with incorrectly diagnosed health issues for years, Orton turned a major corner in 2014 when she was finally able to begin managing her condition after the correct diagnosis. However, realising this newfound clarity could be as disempowering as the previously unanswered questions about her well-being, because it waylaid her sense of self. Laying the foundations of the songs on an upright piano from her home studio in London, these experiences turned into the eight-track Weather Alive , the first album she’s ever self-produced in her nearly 30-year career.

One of the most critically acclaimed records released in 2022, Orton will be performing her first Australian shows in six years with her full band. Known for her mesmerising onstage presence and powerfully emotive vocals, Orton recently performed at the 2023 Glastonbury Festival and Primavera Sound Barcelona, wrapping up an EU/UK tour including shows with The War On Drugs.

With the first notes of the album-opening title track ushering listeners into an expansive and dream-like world of sound, witness what critics have lauded as a ‘a slow-burning tour de force’ ( Pitchfork ), and Orton’s ‘modal vocal phrases and marveling’ stories ( The New York Times ). Performing classic hits such as ‘She Cries Your Name’ and ‘Central Reservation,’ Orton’s sound has shapeshifted from her output with The Chemical Brothers, Andrew Weatherall, and William Orbit, to a pioneer of an electronic, woozy brand of trip- hop. Through all these different sonic explorations, Orton remains a fantastically evocative songwriter, finding artist fans and collaborators in the most unlikely of places. For all the acclaim that fall Orton’s way, she continues to take the path less travelled in forging her next move.

‘Through the writing of these songs and the making of this music, I found my way back to the world around me – a way to reach nature and the people I love and care about. This record is a sensory exploration that allowed for a connection to a consciousness that I was searching for. Through the resonance of sound and a beaten-up old piano I bought in Camden Market while living in a city I had no intention of staying in, I found acceptance and a way of healing.’ – Beth Orton

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Beth Orton will be supported by BATTS .

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Melbourne Recital Centre is committed to the safety of our artists, staff and patrons. A range of public health, hygiene and physical distancing measures are currently in place. Click here to learn more .

7.30pm – 8pm: BATTS 8pm – 8.30pm: Interval 8.30pm – 10pm: Beth Orton

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