Folktronica musician Beth Orton’s latest record, The Ground Above, is made up of two halves, musically and thematically. The first part is dark and downbeat, full of sad lyrics and strange and somewhat scattered accompaniment. The second is more hopeful and sonically melodic. As the album’s title suggests, if we look up, all we see is dirt and worms. We are buried alive. The good news is that we are still alive!
Orton‘s creaky voice reinforces the initial negativity. She begins with the title cut and achingly declares her despair in the first line, “I’m invincible with grief”. She annunciates as if she’s gasping for air. Throughout the song’s eight-plus minute length. The music is comprised of random noises with spurts of a martial drumbeat and echoes of horns, strings, and keys.
Orton self-produced the record and worked with a small group of core musicians including multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, pianist Sam Beste (Vernon Spring), drummers Chris Vatalaro and Vishal Nayak, bassist Tom Herbert, and trumpeter Christos Stylianides. The first half of the album is richly atmospheric and experimental. It features a couple of tracks about memory and loss (“Before I Knew” and “Cigarette Curls”) that mine the specific details of a relationship for meaning. She does not find purpose as much as she notes that the passage of time allows healing. The interplay between instruments becomes more connected. The tempos flow more loosely and are groove-oriented.
Which brings one to The Ground Above‘s core, appropriately called “Waiting”. Set midway, the lyrics (“I’ve been waiting for the hurt to stop / I have been waiting for the punch line to drop”) reveal that the darkness inside has faded into a duller pain. The music becomes more tuneful, with lilting jazz riffs that denote a lightness of spirit. It’s not a happy song per se, but there has been a change in emotional direction.
The latter tracks resemble more conventional songs, with beginnings and ends and continuous musical lines. The three five-minute cuts offer a kind of bittersweet philosophy: that love remembered gives life meaning. However, she’s not convincing. The gloomy songs that opened the album overpower the solace and hope of the latter material.
Beth Orton sees the “Celestial Light”, but she is far from joyful. Indeed, she feels sad and alone. The singer persists with the cheerless “I’ll Miss You” Like T.S. Eliot, she finds spring cruel in its promise of rebirth. Just when she found some contentment in numbness, the promise of something more brings hurt as she recalls past losses. “Love You Right” follows with faint cheer. “All I need is a good reason,” she tells the dead person she once loved. He does not offer one. After all, he is dead. Orton’s demonstrative protests cannot change that. She declares “Life is cruel”, but death does not have feelings. Look up and see the dirt.
Lyrically and musically, Orton is original and poetic on The Ground Above. However, thematically she fails to convince the listener that she has made it through to the “Otherside”. The final track ends with some scattered clapping and diddling strings. There is a sense of being let down by the aesthetic process.
Making the album may have been therapeutic for the artist, but it is not redemptive, and Beth Orton knows it. This brings up one of the fundamental questions about the value of art. Do we judge it as creative expression according to objective measures, or do we listen to find answers to existential questions that only art (or music) can answer? The first part of the record imaginatively recaptures the feeling of suffering. As Paul Simon famously wrote, “Hello darkness, my old friend.” The second part suggests something more positive but leaves us unconvinced.