By Ed Power,Irishexaminer.com
Copyright irishexaminer
All these decades on from the 1990s, she remains a bewitching chronicler of wee-hours ennui – as she demonstrated in 2022 on her career-best album, Weather Alive. She will share highlights from that beautifully stripped-back project at Cork’s Cyprus Avenue when she plays the Sounds from A Safe Harbour festival on Friday, September 12.
As well as her impressive music career, Orton also added a new feather to her cap this year when she was a judge for the International Booker Prize, part of a competition jury chaired by Safe Harbour co-curator Max Porter.
The past is such a long time ago – especially for those who lived their best lives during the glory days of acid house and Britpop. That is certainly the case with Orton. She talks about that period and the haunting records she made with Madonna producer William Orbit and “big beat” DJs the Chemical Brothers as if rummaging through the memories of a stranger.
“I have this thing: I keep moving forward. I’m very excited about being where I am now, creatively and exploring that deeper,” she says. “I can’t speak to the people who want to hear [her early chill-out] music, who want to go back and relive it. Maybe it was just that the 1990s were quite an important time for people. It’s confusing. I’m not sure I know the answer.”
She found the chill out associations tricky to shake – though she says she was never sniffy about being linked with clubbing or with Orbit, the Chemical Brothers or the late producer Andrew Weatherall, who worked with her on Brit Award-nominated 1996 debut, Trailer Park.
“I was never tired of anything in particular,” she says. “I just, was like, ‘fucking hell, I can sing. I can make music. I can make sounds. I’m gonna explore this beyond the men that I was working with’. No disrespect to the men I was working with. I was so lucky to work with some extraordinary people. I just quietly wanted to explore deeper the songwriting part of it. And now [with Weather Alive] it’s the production part of it. I didn’t turn my back on anything particularly. I’m happy that I’ve had the chances to explore the way I have.”
Orton was born in a small town in Norfolk, but after her father’s death, moved to London, with her mother and two brothers. After school, she acted, worked at a Pizza Hut and became a musician, which is how she crossed paths with Orbit, then an aspiring producer and songwriter. She later met the Chemical Brothers, a duo of spotty former students whose sample-heavy dance music was winning a cult following around London.
It was with the “Chems” that she had her big break. Orton provided hazy, beautifully trippy vocals to Alive Alone on their 1995 debut, Exit Planet Dust, and then delivered the ultimate comedown performance on their seven-minute 1997 epic Where Do I Begin?– the 1990s clubland equivalent of The Beatles’ A Day In the Life.
“It was wild. It was so exciting,” she recalls of her days partying with the Chemical Brothers at the famed Heavenly Social club night in the bowels of the Albany pub in central London.
“They used to play down the Albany, which was 60 people smushed in. It was wild. I didn’t quite know what I was doing there. But I knew I was part of and witnessing a seminal moment in musical history. I remember hearing Alive Alone for the first time in that club. My voice booming out across the room. Obviously not that massive – but it was massive in my head. And then suddenly that beat kicks in, and the entire fucking room went mental. I was like, ‘oh that’s wild’.”
Around this time, she first met Weatherall, who was an occasional visitor Cork, where he DJed at the iconic Sweat nights at legendary Sir Henry’s nightclub. He died in 2020 aged 56. As with everyone who knew him, Orton mourns his passing.
“We made good music together. There was a lot of affection there. That spanned the years, and we were still in touch right up to – well, maybe not the last couple of years. That time in Ireland – it was a scene. It was intense.”
She makes her way to Sounds from a Safe Harbour at a curious moment, when the music of the 1990s is celebrated as the last, glorious gasp of pre-internet culture – by a generation far too young to have been there the first time around.
“Maybe it’s the ’60s to them. It is the same kind of distance that we had to the ’60s. And we were obsessed. If the Beatles came and played again, we’d go and see them. I’m not saying that anyone in particular is The Beatles. I’m just saying if Elvis Presley came back we would want to see it, we would want to experience it for ourselves. I guess my kids have this sense that my time, my ’90s time, was more exciting than theirs. Maybe it is a longing for something. It was a very optimistic time, right? There was a sense of optimism. So maybe it’s that. Maybe they’re buying into another time.”
Beth Orton plays Cyprus Avenue Cork, Friday September 12 as part of the Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival, with the show beginning at 6pm. For full details, see soundsfromasafeharbour.com
Five other Safe Harbour highlights
SFSH – Remembering Talos, Cork Opera House, Thursday September 11 (6pm): The legacy of the late Cork musician Eoin French, aka Talos, is celebrated with a live performance featuring Niamh Regan, Ye Vagabonds, The Staves, Lisa Hannigan, Jon Hopkins and others.
Will Butler, Cyprus Avenue, Friday, September 12: The former Arcade Fire member brings his post-punk solo project to Cork.
Jon Hopkins and S Carey, Stack Theatre, Cork School of Music, Saturday September 13 (5pm): Dance producer Hopkins teams up with Bon Iver backing vocalist Carey for a night of meditative folktronica.
Ben Howard and Kate Stables, Live at St Lukes, Saturday, September 13: Prog-pop chart-topper Howard collaborates with This Is The Kit leader Stables for a night of big-screen folk-pop.
Victoria Canal and Christof Van Der Ven, Coughlans, Sunday September 14 (midday): Spanish-American singer Canal is best known for performing with Coldplay at Glastonbury. She is joined by Dutch singer-songwriter Van Der Ven, based in London after several years in Galway.
