Beth Orton has returned with a single, ‘The Ground Above’. About the sprawling, meditative track, the veteran singer-songwriter had this to say in a press release: “We are all vulnerable beings living out invincible lives.” Check out its accompanying video, directed by Imogen Knight and Joseph Lynn, below.
On Instagram, Orton elaborated: “Linear time has no place in music. I find myself trying to iron out my brain like a map, to show what started where, I could spend forever writing notes in the margins, notes to self, finding archaeological artifacts, layers of soil and magic, the strata of love, sorrow and joy in relation to time, all that goes into the architecture of any particular song.”
“What has kept me alive is a feral invincibility, barrelling through life, propelled magnetically as in a flying dream that won’t allow for time to get hold of my ankles and catch up with me,” she continued. “Grief had me say yes to life, to embrace and taste and devour. I know life to be as pointless and as meaningful as I can make it. I wanted to write some of this into a dream, a confluence of meaning and feeling.”
‘The Ground Above’ marks Orton’s first new music since 2022’s Weather Alive. Her band on it features Shahzad Ismaily on bass, Vishal Nayak on drums, Sam Beste on piano, Christos Stylianides on trumpet, Grey McMurray on electric guitar, and Dave Okumu playing “backwards electric guitar.”
