Beth Orton – ‘The Ground Above’ album review: Out of the desert and into the garden
It’s been 30 years since the single ‘She Cries Your Name’ introduced most of the world to Beth Orton.
That song, particularly its third incarnation and accompanying 1997 music video, also locked in some very powerful associations that have followed the London-based artist ever since, including the bespoke genre terminology of ‘folktronica’ and the lingering sense of a stark, desert landscape just outside the amplifier reach of her music.
At this point, Orton would probably like to set the Mojave aside for a while. After filming the ‘She Cries Your Name’ video there, she somewhat infamously returned to the California desert 20 years later to shoot a video for the 2016 single ‘1973’, and soon faced severe online backlash for spray-painting federally protected Joshua trees therein.
Ten years on from that episode, though, the opening title track to Orton’s ninth studio album, The Ground Above, feels like the 55-year-old is still walking through the wavy heat lines of an arid land; only this time, rather than defacing the local flora, she is marvelling at its wonders.
The Skinny: After 30 seconds of mood setting to begin the record, plonking piano and backwards, swirling LSD organs, Orton suddenly steps into the foreground and delivers some absolutely devastating opening pronouncements in a slightly strained and vulnerable voice, like she’d run over here just to say it, but still insists on saying it slowly: “I′m invincible as grief / Violent as a blade of spring released / Ecstatic as a mother’s love / Tearing through the ground to the sky above”.
At the risk of severely overplaying the desert motif myself, Orton is metaphorically stomping over the turf of her Trailer Park days and appreciating, as only an older, wiser person can, just how much life there is in a seemingly dead place. As she explains it herself, the title track to ‘The Ground Above’ was inspired by how “love and grief are intrinsically linked. Eventually, both come to stop you in your tracks. We are all vulnerable beings living out an invincible existence”.
Fans who appreciated the dreamy and jazzy experiments of Orton’s self-produced 2022 album Weather Alive will be pleased to know that Beth is captaining her own ship again here, working with many of the same musicians who brought that vision to life, including multi-intrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, drummer Tom Skinner from The Smile, and bassist Tom Herbert, with additional contributions from Orton’s partner Sam Amidon, Vernon Spring’s Sam Beste, drummer Chris Vatalaro, and guitarists Dave Okumu, Adrian Utley, Greg McMurry, and Paul Butler.
Together, they are all doing some difficult and deliberate world-building. The first three tracks on the album average about seven minutes in length each, and atmospherically exist on a plane not too far away from a Lambchop record or a Daniel Lanois production, like Dylan’s ‘Man in the Long Black Coat’ overlayed with some of the moodier set pieces of Cat Power, an artist who emerged at the same time as Orton and always felt a bit like her Stateside counterpart in a way.
Along a similar line, as the album gets increasingly punchy and soulful by the fourth track, ‘Waiting’, it’s reminiscent of the joyful feeling of Chan Marshall’s The Greatest, as a groovy Stax Records sort of arrangement completely reframes Orton’s heart-on-the-sleeve vocals, revealing that the art-rock ‘folktronica’ stuff was really just the window dressing for a straight-up soul singer. There is legitimately some Otis in there, some Patti LaBelle, some Nina Simone; not when it comes to showmanship and lung capacity, it must be said, but in the fearlessness and willingness to let the music dictate how her words spill out; the emphasis on truth over control.
Standout Track: ‘Waiting’
The Verdict: Orton was very intent on recording a lot of The Ground Above live off the floor, not a common course of action for a spacey, atmospheric, electronically-tinged record. But it sure is noticeable, and really adds a lot to the slow-jam, free-style finish of ‘Cigarette Curls’ and the big ‘Hey Jude’ swings of the album closer ‘Otherside’. The latter song completes the album’s journey from desert record to garden record, as the tracks on the back half get noticeably faster and poppier, concluding with a chorus that sounds anxious on paper, but confident through Orton’s biggest lung expansion of the album: “Tell me you made it through the night / Tell me you made it out alive”.
“I heard that the first birdsong of a new day is the sound of the birds letting it be known they are still here, that they have made it through the night alive and safe,” Orton says in the record’s press release, explaining the motivation behind ‘Otherside’ and part of the grander vision for the album as a whole.
Adding, “What began as a not-so-simple tale of sleeplessness went on to have me turning over bigger themes, those of resilience in the face of loss, what freedom means to the individual and the collective; the ability to start again and make beautiful a life when it has been torn apart.”
Just your standard 2026 pop record, I suppose.
Release Date: June 26, 2026 | Producer: Beth Orton | Label: Partisan Records
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