Recorded in Portland, Oregon, with producer Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Spoon), the album's 10 tracks are yet another bold departure for Orton, who takes traditional folk instrumentation into some unfamiliar territory.
Beth Orton will release ‘Sugaring Season,’ her first album in six years
and her Anti- Records debut, on October 2. Recorded in Portland, Oregon, with
producer Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists), the album bears
the fruits of a period of introspection & renewal: deeply lyrical
songwriting, a newfound expressivity of voice, and, more than ever before, a
daring synthesis of her broad musical influences into a powerfully individual
artistic vision. “I stretched myself as a singer on this record and used
voices I never have before as a writer,” she explains. “A lot of the
writing on this record happened in the dead
of night, when spiders mend their webs, with an infant asleep in the next
room… as a result, my writing became a secret again: illicit and
my own.”
For ‘Sugaring Season," Orton and Martine have brought together a dream band
of new and old friends: keyboardist Rob Burger, bassist Sebastian Steinberg, and
legendary jazz drummer Brian Blade, along with guitarists Marc Ribot and Ted
Barnes and folksinger Sam
Amidon. The album was recorded predominantly live on the floor as the band
reflected and internalized Beth's disparate inspirations, from Roberta Flack's
'First Take’ album to Pentangle's folk-jazz collisions. The songs range
across styles from deeply soulful to
effortless and breezy, with open-tuned guitars, pensive pianos, and modal
grooves underpinning her emotional weathervane of a voice.
While Orton has shifted away from the electronic textures that dominated her
early work, her music is still built upon an implicit groove, even if it
emanates from her acoustic guitar rather than from a sequencer. “It may not be
a ‘dance’ beat,” she says, “but it's
definitely there and it's earthed and primal and insistent.”
Beth Orton is a BRIT Award-winner and two-time Mercury Prize nominee who has
collaborated with Bert Jansch, Emmylou Harris, Beck, Jim O'Rourke, Terry
Callier, and Ryan Adams among others. Her last album, 2006's ‘Comfort of
Strangers,’ was called “unerringly
lovely” by SPIN and “her most accomplished record to date” by Uncut.
(beth-orton.net)