Place Your Beth

“And I’ve just realised that I’ve actually, no pun intended and not even thinking about it, been making Irish soda bread. So there you go, I’m so Irish,” she reveals archly. What makes this particular loaf so Celtic? “Well there’s no alcohol in it... I’ve no fucking idea!”
Luckily, aside from the musical ability she’s so revered for, the approachable Norfolk singer-songwriter also has that multi-tasking thing down. She’s back in the promotional swing as she gears up to release Sugaring Season after a lengthy absence.
“I feel anxious, I feel excited, I feel strange.”
So maybe the baking is therapeutic. It’s also evidence of a new Beth Orton. Rather than the single-minded young artist of old, she’s now a mother of two.
“I’ve been ‘off’ for six years and now here I am making bread! It’s just a little indication of how life has changed. Though it’s not that I’m ‘Mrs. Homely’ now or anything.”
Comfort Of Strangers, a move into folk and away from the electronica that made her a star, came in 2006. Then everything changed.
“My record company weren’t that enamoured and dropped me pretty much right after that record. But then I’m not surprised because right after I released it I got pregnant.”
Well as career moves go...
“Haha! Yeah... ‘Career Move #465’! As it turned out it was a very creative thing to do.”
A daughter, Nancy, arrived. Orton married Vermont folkie Sam Amidon and they had a son, Arthur. Family life changed her perspective on things.
“Completely. My old life just burnt to the ground. Having a child was a revelation in a lot of ways. Challenging, but I think the lunacy of childhood won out in the battle of ‘keeping’ my own self. Versus a child, they’re always going to win! Though, in a funny way, I did keep writing. It meant that I worked at different times, in the middle of the night. It meant that time became more precious. It became a different sort of discipline, which really benefitted me as a person and writer. And it was a lot of fuel for the fire.”
Her creative fire still burning, despite entertaining the idea of finding a new career, returning to music seemed inevitable. At what point did she decide to share her work with the world once more?
“I made that decision around the time I got pregnant with my second child: ‘Now, I really must rele... aw, shit!’ Then I tried to do some recording while I was pregnant but it was like trying to sing with a bowling ball in your belly.”
Sugaring Season was finally recorded last winter in Portland, with the aid of producer Tucker Martine (REM, Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists) and a “dream band” of musicians she had previously worked with. It arrived in a rush, laid down in two weeks.
“We were just live from the floor to the tape. It was a beautiful experience and I don’t remember feeling any sense of panic that there wasn’t much time because we just kept moving through things.”
She puts the carefree approach down to a new confidence and the shift in priorities having a family brings.
“And a big part of that is age. You get to a certain point and you’re like, ‘Fuck it, I haven’t got time to worry about that’. A song like ‘Candles’ was a first take. Tucker had the foresight to press record, even though it was just me showing the band how it went.”
The ten tracks continue Comfort Of Strangers’ preference for a full band sound and themes of nature and superstition abound. ‘Magpie’ deals with “being silenced”, with Beth only able to talk freely to the birds outside her window. It has also taken on a political bent.
“I played it on David Letterman solo and it was quite a powerful experience and timely with the elections coming up. Can music change the world? Well, look at Pussy Riot. It’s interesting in Russia because people think, ‘Aw, Russia’s really cool!’ and then something like this happens and you realise that it’s still a pretty fucking harsh regime. It’s good that that’s been drawn attention to, though it’s horrible for them obviously. At the same time, I’m in America a lot and there’s all this insane politics going on right under our noses. I do have some hope that Obama will get in again but it’s not a given. If these other people get in, fuck knows what’s going to happen. We’ll be in even bigger trouble. I swear to God if that happens...”
She pauses to check her oven. Watch out Mitt. Hell hath no fury like a new mother scorned.

Sugaring Season is out now.