And as for that Beth Orton record, it's just great. Harking back to the initial burst of Trailer Park, marrying the inspirations of folk and the clubbing scene, it'll probably only be those of post-thirties generations that will be impelled to dance around their kitchens and living rooms to this but I have no doubt it will happen.
I was never really part of the nineties dance culture that fed in to Orton's music like some new Age of Aquarius but I do remember just how good Trailer Park sounded when it came out and how it acted as the soundtrack to much of a year that I spent in Brighton in the winter of 1997 and spring of 1998. Kidsticks has much of the same vim, naturally tempered by twenty years of experience and the occasion of motherhood. It's mature and ingrained in life's inevitable lessons and all the better for that.
I'm listening through to it now as I type and somehow it has the cocksure assurance and momentum by Track Four that you feel sure it's not getting to let you down. It's heartening when an artist comes back a couple of decades down the line with work that revives and renews the spirit of what made them so interesting and refreshing when they first came along while putting down something entirely fresh and new that speaks long and loud for itself at the same time. I'm not going to win hipster badges for endorsing Beth Orton in 2016, but hey, I'm on the wrong side of fifty which is probably too old to be wearing badges of any description or looking for claps on the shoulder for having impeccable, cutting edge taste. Kidsticks is just wonderful and Beth will soundtrack my summer in 2016, just as she did in 1998.
No comments:
Post a Comment