Album Review: Beth Orton, The Ground Above

You don’t usually expect an artist to hit their creative zenith on their ninth studio album, 30 years after their debut, but that’s exactly what Norfolk’s Beth Orton has achieved. That debut, Trailer Park, saw Orton hailed as the quiet queen of folktronica, combining acoustic and electronic elements to winning effect.

However, she had virtually fallen off the radar until 2022’s impressive Weather Alive reminded us why we fell in love with her in the first place. The Ground Above is even better. She’s still experimenting with instrumentation, adding a looser, jazzy vibe to her more traditional folk style, alongside the kind of fractured rhythms that have characterised her output since her early days working with William Orbit.

The opening title track is magnificent: eight-and-a-half minutes of liquid bass, tinkling piano, jazzy trumpet and skittish beats, over which Orton’s voice sounds more urgent and raw than usual. Here, she drags the listener deep inside what it feels like to fall in love, with lyrics that can floor you like a haymaker: “You kissed me like you knew what I was for / And it wiped me out like chalk off of a board.”

The more ethereal ‘Celestial Light’ has Orton crooning about first kisses and starry nights, as the pitter-patter of the drums skiffles in the background. On the piano-led ‘Before I Knew’, she sounds like she’s singing through tears, while the upbeat ‘Waiting’ has a summery shimmer and ‘I’ll Miss You’ aches with longing.

Closer ‘Otherside’ is equally stunning; the gentle swaying rhythm, and slightly drunken brass, belying the power and poignancy of her lyrics about motherhood, survival and love, with Orton stridently declaring, “I sing out for my freedom / I sing out for my life”. Superb.

• Out now.