Beth Orton New LP “The Ground Above”

“Vast and atmospheric, moving and mysterious” – MOJO ★★★★

“The Ground Above sees Orton reconsidering everything from the ground up, finding

new ways of living and translating it through her most vital work yet” – Rolling Stone UK ★★★★

“The appreciation for our increasingly complex emotional survival distinguishes The

Ground Above” – Uncut ★★★★

“An epiphany extending from her performance to her sentiments, provoking some of

her most joyful, or liberated, music” – Classic Pop ★★★★

Beth Orton today releases her eagerly anticipated and already-acclaimed new album The Ground Above via Mushroom Music/Partisan Records, available in vinyl, CD and digital formats.

For more than 30 years, Beth Orton has been our antenna to the cosmos, the poet laureate of forces too vast to take in all at once. A testament to her artistry, The Ground Above is Orton’s most direct music to date; urgent, raw, embodied and emotionally fearless, moving between subconscious expression and expansive, timeless song craft. Her voice, from whispered incantation to primal wail, equally delivers melodies reminiscent of classic songbook form. Throughout the album, Orton documents survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and the ongoing choice to stay – in love, in art, and in the world.

As with 2022’s critical breakthrough Weather Alive, Orton self-produced the album, staying true to the collective spirit of the initial live recordings whilst sculpting and expanding, over a year long process, the record we hear today. Working with trusted musicians including multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, Vernon Spring’s Sam Beste, drummers Chris Vatalaro (Antibalas, Radiohead) and Vishal Nayak (Nick Hakim), Trumpet player Christos Styliandes and bassist Tom Herbert, Orton reaches new heights as a producer and songwriter.

Alongside the album, Beth today reveals her new single ‘Cigarette Curls’. Throughout the track Orton and her band sculpt an ever-evolving, prismed groove which never once takes an expected turn. Capturing both abandon and rupture, the music builds and falls away, rooted in lived experience rather than nostalgia, Beth sings of a formative love, tender and reckless in equal measure. Special guest Nick Hakim’s layered harmonies, which come in half way through the track, complete the soulful yearning that underlies the song. It arrives alongside a live recorded video directed by Iain and Jane Pollard and Joseph Lynn.

MORE ABOUT BETH ORTON

For more than three decades, Beth Orton has remained one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music. Since her 1996 debut Trailer Park, she has built a catalogue marked by emotional clarity and constant evolution, from Comfort of Strangers to the spectral, self-produced Weather Alive. Released in 2022, Weather Alive became a major critical breakthrough, signalling not just a return but a reinvention. Her first self-produced album and debut for Partisan Records, it earned widespread acclaim, with The New York Times praising its “modal vocal phrases and marvelling” storytelling, Pitchfork awarding Best New Music (8.7), and MOJO highlighting its richness and extraordinary writing.