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BETH ORTON - CENTRAL RESERVATION *200g*

BETH ORTON/CENTRAL RESERVATION *200g*

On her stunning sophomore album, Central Reservation, Beth Orton slips free of the electronic textures that colored her acclaimed 1996 debut, Trailer Park, stripping her music down to its raw essentials to produce a work of stark simplicity and rare poignancy. With the exception of a pair of Ben Watt-produced tracks ('Stars All Seem to Weep' and a remix of the title cut), Central Reservation rejects synthetic sounds and beats altogether in favor of an organic atmosphere somewhere between folk, jazz, and the blues; the focal point is instead Orton's evocatively soulful voice, which invests songs like 'Sweetest Decline' and 'Feel to Believe' with remarkable warmth and honesty. It's a risky move creatively as well as commercially (after all, the club culture was the first to champion Orton's talents) but it pays off handsomely. The new material possesses a timelessness that recalls the best of Nick Drake or Sandy Denny, with a haunting beauty to match. Its emotional centerpiece, the seven-minute 'Pass in Time' (a spine-tingling duet with legendary folk-jazz mystic Terry Callier), grapples with the death of Orton's mother, but its underlying message of healing and perseverance is powerfully life-affirming. 

1. Stolen Car
2. Sweetest Decline
3. Couldn't Cause Me Harm
4. So Much More
5. Pass in Time
6. Central Reservation
7. Stars All Seem to Weep
8. Love Like Laughter
9. Blood Red River
10. Devil Song
11. Feel to Believe
12. Central Reservation