Beth Orton recently performed at Brighton’s Concorde 2 venue, delivering a set that focused heavily on her most recent material rather than historical tracks. Accompanied by a band with a foundation in jazz and experimentation, Orton played to an enthusiastic audience.
Rather than revisiting the classic singer-songwriter style and misty electronics of her 1996 debut album Trailer Park, the performance drew almost exclusively from her two newest releases: Weather Alive from 2022 and this year’s The Ground Above. The lone exception from her earlier catalogue was the title track of her 1999 Mercury-nominated release, Central Reservation.
This musical direction reflects an artistic reboot that began in the mid-2010s, shifting her output away from traditional acoustic arrangements back towards experimental and dancefloor-adjacent sounds. Reviewers note that this creative evolution has yielded some of the finest work of her career spanning more than three decades.
Original source: Beth Orton review – battered optimism from an artist making the best music of her career
