English singer/songwriter Beth Orton’s latest album Weather Alive (Partisan Records) was one of the most critically acclaimed records of 2022, landing on numerous year-end “best of 2022” lists including NPR, Pitchfork, and The New York Times — the latter of which praised Orton for her “modal vocal phrases and marveling [stories].”
Beth Orton performs at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on Monday, Sept. 11.
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.
Watch the official music video for “Friday Night” by Beth Orton on YouTube:
In their Best New Album and 8.7 review, Pitchfork wrote, “Weather Alive is a testament to her conviction, an eerily physical experience with the power to make believers of the rest of us… vessels for memories, methods of communicating with distant versions of herself… [it] conjures a dreamlike atmosphere with songs that spiral out into the ether.”
Beth Orton
W/ Ben Sloan
The Birchmere
Monday, Sept. 11
Show @ 7:30pm
$35
All ages