Beth Orton is an artist who has enraptured her many fans since emerging in the early 90s in collaboration with William Orbit. Her first two albums 1996 debut, ‘Trailer Park’ and ‘Central Reservation’ (1999) were heralded as pioneering ‘a synthesis of electronic and acoustic sounds’ and brought her international success. In all this time, I’ve simply never found my interest to have been sufficiently piqued to explore her work. I make no apologies for this. Life’s too short, and anyone who makes like they’ve listened to everything is probably lying, or not really listening.
Increasingly, I’ve found that I can’t listen to music – especially new music – while doing my dayjob, and similarly while cooking or on the school run. And if I’m reviewing something, I can’t have anything else on in the background. I just can’t multitask like that.
No matter: ‘Weather Alive’ is her first LP in six years and Partisan Records debut, and there’s an apparent keenness to perpetuate the legend around its creation here, with a bio detailing how ‘Weather Alive’ was ‘written on a battered old piano she saved from Camden Market’ among the pitch for what ‘could prove to be another career-defining record for an artist who’s already peppered her three decades in music with a steady series of career-defining records.’
We had lockdown. We all had to improvise at times. But the image of ‘on a battered old piano’ is an image which is more in keeping with the early 80s vibes that the music itself. But perhaps it’s hard to reconcile an artist with a successful 30-year career with the reality of being a real person making music while living a life, which is ultimately what ‘Weather Alive’ captures the experience of, drawing on memories and occurrences.
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It has an understated, reflective feel throughout, and the instrumentation is muted, merging into a somewhat muffled mellifluousness. The title track opens the album and sets the tone in a captivatingly atmospheric style, a seven-minute slow-smoker. It works well as a sound and a style and feels cohesive as an album, but despite the nagging bass groove and busy jazz drumming of ‘Fractals’ and the lilting melancholy of ‘Forever Young’, it does feel a shade samey after a time, not aided by the fact the songs are on the longer side, with six of the eight running past five minutes without really going anywhere. That said, as a whole, it has all the hallmarks of a grower.
Dreamy, vaguely jazzy, and quietly sad without being morose, ‘Weather Alive’ is unquestionably accomplished, and an album that deserves time to embed.
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