For Beth Orton, the messiness of being human has never sounded better

Beth Orton on grief, her folktronica past and new album The Ground Above Sun 26 Jul 2026 at 4:30am British singer-songwriter Beth Orton had a friend whose best clothes always seemed to remain in the closet. "She was always waiting for this better time to come. And then she went and died," she explains. "I thought, 'Jesus. I hope she put on her best dressed before she died. Got them all out of the cupboard, out of their plastic and found reasons to just wear them even if it wasn't really the occasion." Orton couches this tragic, universally relatable sentiment — savouring the present before it's too late — in her elegant, lounge-y song Waiting. "Even if you're not getting it quite right, go and tell the person you love them. "Even if you fumble it, even if you're a bit of a mess, you can still have the dignity to live as you are and it's not all about becoming this better version of yourself. "And sometimes you have to forget that as well and just have a dance, move around a bit." Waiting is a stand-out from Orton's ninth studio album, The Ground Above, a deeply atmospheric, collaborative career high. Self-producing and surrounded by skilled musos, Orton fronts expansive, lush orchestrations with a weathered voice and hard-won perspectives. It's a "sister record" to 2022's acclaimed Weather Alive, musically and conceptually "born from a similar world and period of my life." At 55, Orton captures profound truths about the human complexities of grief, mortality, and the courage to love imperfectly in songs that stir with organic grooves and a palpable sense of sensitive yearning and melancholic beauty. "I was waiting for forever to come / Before I knew it, it was already come and gone," goes another line in Waiting, inspired by Orton's daughter. "She's 19 and I just can't believe how fast it goes. "Everyone says that to you… And it's kind of heartbreaking and wonderful, but it always has been and always will be." Coming full circle At 19, Orton's daughter is the same age her mother was when she began her music career. Raised in East England, Orton got her start with producer William Orbit, who became her then-37-year-old boyfriend, collaborating on Superpinkymandy — her rare 1993 debut released only in Japan. After lending her voice to electronic heavyweights The Chemical Brothers and Red Snapper, Orton went solo. She fused troubadour folk with spacious electronica in 1996's acclaimed, Platinum-selling Trailer Park. Alongside its BRIT Award-winning follow-up, 1999's Central Reservation, Orton's "folktronica" was pitched as a salve for overcooked clubbers. Dubbed 'The Comedown Queen' — a title she hasn't always been comfortable with — Orton was, behind the chill music, dealing with hectic realities. "A lot of those songs were written from a really, really difficult time in my life," she says. "It was a really powerless time. I had a certain amount of power within the songs but within the world… I felt very little. "There were moments of violence, homelessness — there was a lot going on. It was complex." At the time, Orton had lost her mother to cancer (her father died when she was 11). Diagnosed with Crohn's disease as a teen, she also treated the grief and chronic inflammation with corticosteroids but also self-medicated with drugs and booze. Looking back now as a sober mother of two teenagers, as Trailer Park marks its 30th anniversary, Orton confesses her relationship with her early work is, understandably, mixed. "To be completely honest, I think I've always had quite a difficult time relating to that part of myself. "I'm very proud of who I was and the music that got made… But there's part of me that just wants to keep moving forward." Orton's discography only got more compelling and difficult to categorise over subsequent albums, refining her storytelling and broadening her sonic and emotional spectrum. Learning to listen The Ground Above reunited Orton with her jazz-trained Weather Alive touring ensemble but she was thrilled to also induct an "extraordinary palette of [new] collaborators". Pros like Adrian Utley (of trip hop pioneers Portishead); drummer Tom Skinner (from Radiohead side project The Smile); Sam Beste (Amy Winehouse's former pianist), and multi-instrumentalist Paul Butler (The Bees and Michael Kiwanuka's band), who was "like his own little orchestra," she says. "I'm just there to inspire an idea and then allow the people in the room to do what they do best." She'd give explicit direction, such as the influence of Mott The Hoople's Bowie-penned All The Young Dudes on the hopeful, reach-to-the-rafters climax on closing track Otherside. But Orton also made room for discovery. "Always thought I'd see your face again," she laments of a formative early friendship on Cigarette Curls, where it "was very much the band in the room coming up with the groove". For Waiting, Orton offered a mood board of Carole King, Terry Callier's soulful, swinging Ordinary Joe and Joni Mitchell's impressionistic Hejira. And her band knew "exactly what to do." Ultimately, learning to be respectful, and not dictate, made Orton a valued ringleader. "To be a good listener, that's an art form in and of itself. Not everyone's a good listener." Giving over to the experience, "being present and to let go," is a lesson she learned from producer Jim O'Rourke making 2006's stark, folksy Comfort of Strangers. "One of my most beloved records," she adds. "There's something in getting out of the way of the process, just allowing it to happen, that creates something beyond people in the room. It's extraordinary." This varied skill set — as a singer, songwriter, band leader and producer — elevates Orton to new heights on The Ground Above. Thinking about wisdom Beating at the album's heart is a depth of maturity and honesty, but also economy, as Orton navigates aging and her evolving identity as a mother, wife and artist. On the wintry I'll Miss You, Orton confronts a long-faded romance with sadness but also sobering resilience. "I'll always love you," she confesses. "But I can't live in the dark/So I'm returning to my heart." The sting of loss augments the sweetness of the next track, Love You Right, a stirring devotional where Orton's voice cracks with joy against soft chords and rising strings: "For a world that's cruel/You know you made it kind/And I only ever want to learn to love you right." The Beth Orton of the 90s simply couldn't have conveyed the same weight of conviction; an unshakeable belief in feeling and connection in an increasingly fraught and fragmented world. Is this the kind of Zen wisdom that only comes with age? "It's complicated," says Orton, reasoning it "comes and goes, it's many levels of knowing and unknowing. Sometimes I think older people are more confused, honestly. "You do get bolder with age but it's funny. I was rehearsing songs like Galaxy of Emptiness, or even Central Reservation, and I thought these themes — resilience and love and grief — they've always been there." Those big ideas are explored in the opening title track, a spellbinding eight minutes of spectral textures and restless rhythms that posits grief and love as parallel, intertwining forces. Orton elaborates on the track's philosophy: "What we call love, sometimes we create an enemy within, an enemy without, we can create wars, build from our passion, we can destruct. "This idea that we come together in a kiss, in an embrace, and sometimes that very embrace we then jettison apart because we can't actually handle our sameness. We need there to be otherness. "We need to other people, we need difference and it's just not real. It's a fabrication. And the grief of that, the loss and the abandonment that we experience when we push others away is profound." Emerging from her intense line of thinking, she chuckles: "It's very complex being a human." Indeed, but The Ground Above's strength is in rendering those knotty nuances in elegant poetry and evocative, immersive music. "I'm invincible as grief/Dancing 'cross a lake of loss beneath," she sings. "My capacity for joy/Is ready and is able and is loyal." Bringing herself back together It's one thing to read Orton's words. It's another, more visceral experience to hear how her seasoned voice enriches them with a lived-in authenticity. The fragility of her singing is almost a virtue, the fissures and raspy trembles conveying emotions in a way that cannot be faked, only earned. Orton has often said she doesn't view herself as a singer. In the past year, however, her opinion has softened. After "bombing around in a Volvo" touring across out-of-the-way venues in Scotland and Ireland with her musician-husband Sam Amidon, she experienced an epiphany. "It was in these funny, unglamorous little clubs and churches yet… They've been some of the most satisfying gigs I've done," she shares. "I was like, 'Oh, I guess this is what I do. I am a singer!' I finally accepted it." It's a concession that reflects how Orton is learning to be kinder to herself. "Sometimes you can strive and do your best. Have the best intention. [But] even if your true self isn't who you'd like to be at that moment, you still have to embrace that part of you." That concept is embodied in the album's cover image, a "really beautiful" photo of Orton and her waif-like double shot with "one of those old, massive shutter cameras. "This woman [and] a little ghost. It looks to me much like I did when I was little. Maybe right now I feel like the parts of myself that I've maybe abandoned have kind of integrated. She's sort of back with me a bit." The Ground Above is Orton revisiting and "starting to warm to the past", and maybe reclaiming it, too? "I'm getting there," she responds. "We do splinter sometimes, right? It happens. But I feel very close to younger parts of myself. "I'm sort of doing it for me now and I'm doing it for me then." The Ground Above is out now.