After drifting away from her pioneering fusion of trip-hop and folk with diversions into jazz-tinged, acoustic alt-folk, Beth Orton's sixth solo album, 2016's Kidsticks, found her broadly re-embracing electronics. Six years later, Weather Alive nestles into a comparatively hushed, atmospheric blend of acoustic and electronic timbres that's meticulous and nebulous at once. The album finds her joined by a skilled group of backers, including core players Tom Herbert (bass) and Tom Skinner (drums), with help from, among others, synth player Francine Perry, vibraphonist Sam Beste, saxophonist Alabaster DePlume, and Shahzad Ismaily, who moved between guitar, Moog, harmonica, and additional bass and percussion. It was self-produced at her home studio, with Orton's unusually brittle vocal performances accompanied by a "cheap, crappy" upright piano in her garden shed. She begins with an absorbing, seven-minute title track that introduces the singer's weary rasp against a backdrop mix of sustain and improvised interjection by duo bass, synthesizer, near and distance saxophone, close-up piano, hand drums, vibraphone, and more. Her first words, "In the morning/All is dawning/In the stillness of the day," evoke a low-lit scene that's eventually populated by the root of a tree, steps down to water, shadows that breathe, and weather "so beautiful outside/It almost makes me wanna cry." Instrumentation expands to include drum kit, percussive noise effects, and plenty of shimmer by the time lyrics arrive at "The love, the love we're giving/Gonna bring us back into being." It ends with a spaceship-like whir that is mirrored at the beginning of the more-skittering second track, "Friday Night." Weather Alive's misty atmospheres part somewhat one-third and two-thirds of the way through for the livelier "Fractals," which actually establishes a bass groove, and the spare "Lonely," which features one of the more expressive vocal performances of Orton's career. The rest of the album, including its over-seven-minute closer ("Unwritten"), maintains an immersive quality that's as haunting as Orton's rough-hewn vocals, song titles like "Haunted Satellite" and "Arms Around a Memory," and lyrics such as "It's just that I was getting unwritten."
© Marcy Donelson /TiVo