Exquisitely beautiful, vulnerable, raw and sensitively emotional, candid ninth LP in now over three decades by the British singer-songwriter, self-producing again after 2022’s Weather Alive, with a group of highly accomplished, complementary musicians, and lyrical themes of survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and deciding to stay - in love, in art, and in the world. Her voice has a half-whispered, emotional croak which is hugely affecting, and her musicians are intensely sensitive to her lyrics ad delivery, including regularly collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, pianist Sam Beste, guitarists Grey McMurray and Dave Okumu, drummers Chris Vatalaro and Vishal Nayak, trumpet player Christos Styliandes and bassist Tom Herbert. Beste’s delicate piano and Styliandes’ trumpet are particularly outstanding. The opening and title track sets the tone, with a tumbling rhythms and melodies and a fragile sense of letting life go where it will, about which Orton has commented: “Linear time has no place in music. I find myself trying to iron out my brain like a map, to show what started where, I could spend forever writing notes in the margins, notes to self, finding archaeological artefacts, layers of soil and magic, the strata of love, sorrow and joy in relation to time, all that goes into the architecture of any particular song. What has kept me alive is a feral invincibility, barrelling through life, propelled magnetically as in a flying dream that won’t allow for time to get hold of my ankles and catch up with me. Grief had me say yes to life, to embrace and taste and devour. I know life to be as pointless and as meaningful as I can make it. I wanted to write some of this into a dream, a confluence of meaning and feeling.”
So on that gradually unfurling gentle eight-and-a-half-minute title track of subtle keyboards, drums and trumpet, track we hear the instantly striking, vulnerable lyrics: “I′m invincible as grief / Violent as a blade of spring released / Ecstatic as a mother's love / Tearing through the ground to the sky above … And you kissed me like you knew what I was for.” Before I Knew moves at a slower, not less powerful pace, Cigarette Curls has the delicious easy pace, with simply guitar chops, piano and subtle drums, and wonderful electric guitar solo, delivered with powerful, understated emotion: “Time moves faster than the pain / I always thought I’d see your face again ….I was alone, I was alone I was alone And I did what I knew I would do / I did everything I said I wouldn’t do / I was running, / I was afraid, I was afraid.” Waiting is another gem with a straight beat and each instrument gently intertwining: “I've been waiting for the hurting to stop / I've been waiting for the punchline to drop / Anytime I hear the music we played / I dissolve into a puddle of rain.” Celestial Light is slower, and more ethereal, I’ll Miss You and Love You Right retain a continuity of tenderness, before the closer Otherside, with insistent piano chords and a wonderful swell of emotion and sound, mixing glad melancholy and tearful joy: “I heard the blackbird sing and knew I hadn’t slept / The sound so full of hope that finally I wept / What do I know of this sweet life, what do I care / Her voice rang out, I am alive, I am still here.” A glorious tender emotional album of the year contender, and perhaps Orton’s yet. Out on Partisan Records.
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