It s not long since the name Beth Orton wouldn t have meant a whole lot to a whole lot of people. But these days all that has changed. With two superb albums under her belt and a brace of eagerly anticipated Irish shows, Beth Orton has arrived.
In an industry famed for its hyperbole, Beth s success is all the more remarkable for the fact that it was achieved without any fuss whatsoever. OK, so she worked with dance guru/producer, William Orbit on a number of projects; she provided the voice for the closing track on the Chemical Brothers debut album; and then she recorded her own debut, Trailer Park. All of a sudden, she became a Top 40 artist, was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize as well as for two Brit Awards. Did she ever dream about that sort of success?
When I was young, I always wrote poetry and that, she recalls, down a phoneline from New York. The first song I ever wrote was when I was nine, for my mum. I never really wanted to be a singer or anything like that, but when I met William Orbit, I was 19 and I was fairly skint. He decided that I had a voice: it wasn t a big deal or anything but he got me in to sing on stuff and gave me money for it. So I really started off because it was a little earner on the side. Then William got more into what I was doing and more encouraging, so we started writing a lot of songs together.
She fronted Orbit s Strange Cargo project, and things started moving gradually . She admits that she was bitten, the bug had gotten me , and she started writing songs on her own, but in all the time I was writing, I never thought I d be successful at it. I used to fear the idea, and I didn t have many expectations.
Even when she got to record her debut album, Beth still refused to believe that her star was in the ascendent.
I thought that I d just quietly make the album and then go away, and then it got nominated for awards and stuff, she says. I was amazed. I thought people were taking the piss at first. Then it just began to feel like I d written songs through not being able to communicate in a lot of ways. I felt that songs were very grounding, and that when I wrote a song I d feel very connected and centred. To release them and find that other people felt the same way that I did, just felt amazing, that I wasn t alone with these thoughts and ideas.
I could tell that people responded to the songs because they d come up to me after gigs saying how much it meant to them. I don t think they realised how much it meant to me that they connected and related like that, because I never thought people would.
She still gets that same buzz when she plays a new song at a gig and people respond in the same way. Maybe now I m even more open to it, she muses. Like before, metaphorically I d have my eyes screwed up and my ears closed, like seeing a bad film. Now I m less scared and I can acknowledge people liking it.
The media has also taken Orton to its bosom. Over the years Orton has been regularly described as the female Beck . In fact, she has worked with the boy Hansen recently and even duetted with him on stage.
I was staying in Los Angeles, doing some work, and we did a little impromptu gig at a place called Largo s. It s the best little club in LA, where people just get up and sing, which is really good fun, she recalls. I went back and did a gig about a month ago and I didn t have anyone to support me so he came up and did a few songs, which was great.
Beth also did some messing around on his record but I m not sure how that s going to come out cos I was a bit jet-lagged when I did it. But he s great: he s a lovely chap.
So she doesn t mind being compared to him, then?
Not at all, she says. At the end of the day he s a songwriter and I m a songwriter. But what he does is a collage of things: he does that Andy Warhol thing of repeating the pattern, that s basically what loops and beats is. He is the king of that. I think I m different from him in that he s more hip-hop than I am.
But neither Beck nor Beth is afraid to experiment with different genres.
She agrees: If I was a painter, I wouldn t just use watercolours: I d be using inks, chalks, cutting things up and pasting them down, and that s what I like to do with my music too. It s just about being open and allowing myself to do what the fuck I want.
Her second album, Central Reservation, has cemented her reputation as a wonderful songwriter and innovative artist. To these ears it is more focused than her debut, and still has more spine-tingling moments than your average Wes Craven movie. The album sees Beth joined by a host of special guests, including Ben Watt (Everything But The Girl), Ben Harper and the legendary Dr John. While acknowledging that working with these big names was a buzz , Orton also pays tribute to long-time band-mates Ted Barnes (guitar) and Sean Read (piano), who have been an incredible influence on my music, more directly than all the big names.
Still, she describes Dr John s sublime piano playing on Sweetest Decline as fucking beautiful , a description often used for her music. However, one criticism that has been levelled at Orton s work in the past is that her songs are also inherently sad and sceptics would claim, miserable. This is something she has denied in the past, but on mature reflection, she confesses that yes, her lyrics are indeed a bit on the sad side.
Some people really respond to sad songs, it makes them happy: not cos they re miserable fuckers but because they experience some kind of cathartic feeling, she explains. When emotions are expressed, it s an amazing freedom. Sometimes it s hard to express emotions, and sometimes you ll hear it in a song and you ll think, Fuck, that s how I feel . I ve denied the fact that my songs are miserable, but as I get older and I listen to them, I think, OK, yeah, they can be pretty sad . Even when I try to write a happy song, it comes out sad.
The difference with Beth Orton s music, though, is that being miserable has rarely felt so good, as anyone who experiences her live show will testify. She s in Dublin for two shows, one at HQ on August 31st, and one as part of the Transmissions series of gigs in the Olympia on September 1st.
She is looking forward to playing Ireland again: Ireland is somewhere I ve always wanted to live. I love playing there. That s where a lot of the most exciting music comes from, it seems to run through everyone s blood and it s always an honour and a pleasure to play there.
The rest of 1999 is one big tour for Ms Orton, although she is looking forward to getting home to Norfolk for a couple of weeks before the European leg of her tour begins in earnest: I m really fucking homesick right now. America is great but sometimes I just get swamped by it. I just want a conversation that actually goes somewhere. Some people are great and you can talk to them, but after a while I just feel like I m losing my identity and I want it back. But on the whole, I love touring. I love to sing, what can I say? n