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Weather Alive
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Weather Alive
Current price: $16.99
Barnes and Noble
Weather Alive
Current price: $16.99
Size: CD
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After drifting away from her pioneering fusion of trip-hop and folk with diversions into jazz-tinged, acoustic alt-folk,
Beth Orton
's sixth solo album, 2016's
Kidsticks
, found her broadly re-embracing electronics. Six years later,
Weather Alive
nestles into a comparatively hushed, atmospheric blend of acoustic and electronic timbres that's meticulous and nebulous at once. The album finds her joined by a skilled group of backers, including core players
Tom Herbert
(bass) and
Tom Skinner
(drums), with help from, among others, synth player
Francine Perry
, vibraphonist
Sam Beste
, saxophonist
Alabaster DePlume
, and
Shahzad Ismaily
, who moves between guitar, Moog, harmonica, and additional bass and percussion. It was self-produced at her home studio, with
Orton
's unusually brittle vocal performances accompanied by a "cheap, crappy" upright piano in her garden shed. She begins with an absorbing, seven-minute title track that introduces the singer's weary rasp against a backdrop mix of sustain and improvised interjection by duo bass, synthesizer, near and distant saxophone, close-up piano, hand drums, vibraphone, and more. Her first words, "In the morning/All is dawning/In the stillness of the day," evoke a low-lit scene that's eventually populated by the root of a tree, steps down to water, shadows that breathe, and weather "so beautiful outside/It almost makes me wanna cry." Instrumentation expands to include drum kit, percussive noise effects, and plenty of shimmer by the time lyrics arrive at "The love, the love we're giving/Gonna bring us back into being." It ends with a spaceship-like whir that is mirrored at the beginning of the more-skittering second track, "Friday Night."
's misty atmospheres part somewhat one-third and two-thirds of the way through for the livelier "Fractals," which actually establishes a bass groove, and the spare "Lonely," which features one of the more expressive vocal performances of
's career. The rest of the album, including its over-seven-minute closer ("Unwritten"), maintains an immersive quality that's as haunting as
's rough-hewn vocals, song titles like "Haunted Satellite" and "Arms Around a Memory," and lyrics such as "It's just that I was getting unwritten." ~ Marcy Donelson
Beth Orton
's sixth solo album, 2016's
Kidsticks
, found her broadly re-embracing electronics. Six years later,
Weather Alive
nestles into a comparatively hushed, atmospheric blend of acoustic and electronic timbres that's meticulous and nebulous at once. The album finds her joined by a skilled group of backers, including core players
Tom Herbert
(bass) and
Tom Skinner
(drums), with help from, among others, synth player
Francine Perry
, vibraphonist
Sam Beste
, saxophonist
Alabaster DePlume
, and
Shahzad Ismaily
, who moves between guitar, Moog, harmonica, and additional bass and percussion. It was self-produced at her home studio, with
Orton
's unusually brittle vocal performances accompanied by a "cheap, crappy" upright piano in her garden shed. She begins with an absorbing, seven-minute title track that introduces the singer's weary rasp against a backdrop mix of sustain and improvised interjection by duo bass, synthesizer, near and distant saxophone, close-up piano, hand drums, vibraphone, and more. Her first words, "In the morning/All is dawning/In the stillness of the day," evoke a low-lit scene that's eventually populated by the root of a tree, steps down to water, shadows that breathe, and weather "so beautiful outside/It almost makes me wanna cry." Instrumentation expands to include drum kit, percussive noise effects, and plenty of shimmer by the time lyrics arrive at "The love, the love we're giving/Gonna bring us back into being." It ends with a spaceship-like whir that is mirrored at the beginning of the more-skittering second track, "Friday Night."
's misty atmospheres part somewhat one-third and two-thirds of the way through for the livelier "Fractals," which actually establishes a bass groove, and the spare "Lonely," which features one of the more expressive vocal performances of
's career. The rest of the album, including its over-seven-minute closer ("Unwritten"), maintains an immersive quality that's as haunting as
's rough-hewn vocals, song titles like "Haunted Satellite" and "Arms Around a Memory," and lyrics such as "It's just that I was getting unwritten." ~ Marcy Donelson
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