Beth Orton: The Ground Above

Beth Orton has made a career of quiet reinventions, moving from the electronic folk of her early work to the warmer acoustics of Comfort of Strangers and back to beats on Kidsticks. On her ninth album, The Ground Above, she steps further along a path carved by its predecessor, Weather Alive, deepening an atmospheric sound that feels both patient and haunted.

Self-produced and featuring drummer Tom Skinner, bassist Shahzad Ismaily, and guitarist Adrian Utley, the album opens space for grief and delicate reflection. The title track sets the tone with misty arrangement and lyrics that weigh loss against fragile resilience. Across its eight songs, Orton never rushes, letting her collaborators shape the terrain around a voice that holds sorrow without melodrama.

Where Weather Alive introduced a more expansive calm, The Ground Above finds Orton refining that approach. It offers no sharp pivots, only the sound of an artist working fertile ground, turning scars into something quietly luminous.