Review: Beth Orton Demands Your Attention on ‘The Ground Above’

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“What has kept me alive is feral invincibility,” Beth Orton wrote in an Instagram post announcing her new album The Ground Above, out June 26 on Partisan. The songwriter unflinchingly stares down life three decades into her career.

By David Harris

“What has kept me alive is feral invincibility,” Beth Orton wrote in an Instagram post announcing her new album The Ground Above, out June 26 on Partisan. “Grief had me say yes to life, to embrace and taste and devour,” Orton wrote later in the note, perhaps best summing up the paradox inherent in her music.

The Ground Above continues the trajectory from Orton’s last record, the career-best Weather Alive (2022). Orton, who began as a folk/trip-hop musician 30 years ago on debut record Trailer Park, has held onto the melancholia of her early music, but largely eschewed the electronic dance beats that defined her work. Instead, Orton leans into the immersive, dreamy sounds of Weather Alive to craft a new album that veers more closely toward late-night jazz clubs than music for the spacey set.

Working again with collaborators Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Shahzad Ismaily (Ceramic Dog) and joined by Nick Hakim and drummer Tom Skinner (the Smile), Orton uses The Ground Above to create weighty songs that deal with both joy and sadness. Beginning with the eight-and-a-half-minute title track, Orton’s craggy vocals are front and center for the record’s duration. “I’m invincible as grief / Violent as a blade of spring released / Ecstatic as a mother’s love / Tearing through the ground to the sky above,” Orton sings, voice perched on the precipice.

Most of The Ground Above’s eight tracks are moody growers where only multiple, deep listens can separate their bounties. Only on the penultimate track, “Love You Right,” does Orton allow her voice to soar. In many ways, it feels like a more appropriate ending to the record than “Otherside,” where Orton sings, “Go and sing out for your freedom / Sing out for your life / Sing out for another day / You get to make it right.” This may feel a bit too much of a pat summation, especially with the better song preceding it.

Orton is more successful in other songs such as standout “Waiting.” Leaning on Christos Stylianides’ tasteful trumpet and Jesse Chandler’s flute, the song finds the singer not waiting idly for life to pass by. Meanwhile, the gentle “Before I Knew,” a song the musician said is about “beliefs so deeply ingrained it’s unclear where they arose from,” feels as fragile as Orton’s brittle voice.

Like Orton’s prior work, The Ground Above traverses some tricky emotional terrain. It’s a record best suited for a chill autumn evening rather than the full-throated warmth of summer. But that shouldn’t stop you from buying it. Spin it now, let it mellow, and when you return to The Ground Above as summer comes to a close, Orton will still be there to embrace you.  

Source: Beth Orton Demands Your Attention on ‘The Ground Above’ – SPIN

The Scottish director who failed to salvage Burt Reynolds’ career

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The biggest danger to Burt Reynolds‘ career was always Burt Reynolds, with the actor developing an unfortunate habit of shooting himself in the foot.

There are only so many times an established star can turn down a game-changing role before they’re no longer an established star, and by the time Reynolds reached the end of the 1980s, his unbroken five-year stint as the biggest box office draw in American cinema seemed like a distant memory,

To be honest, he didn’t really have anyone to blame but himself. He should have continued striking when the iron was at its hottest, but instead, he kept knocking back parts in acclaimed, awards-worthy, or crowd-pleasing smash hits in favour of making rubbish action flicks, thrillers, and comedies, which gradually saw him slide down the Hollywood ladder and into irrelevance.

After all, you can’t turn down Die Hard, Pretty Woman, Jack Nicholson’s Academy Award-winning gig in Terms of Endearment, James fucking Bond, and Star Wars‘ Han Solo, go on to make Stroker Ace, Stick, Malone, Rent-a-Cop, and Striptease, and expect that everything will turn out alright in the long run.

Even Paul Thomas Anderson failed to drag Reynolds back to mainstream prominence, with his career-best and Oscar-nominated outing in Boogie Nights leading to absolutely nothing, with the veteran quickly falling back into the habit of knocking out B-grade genre fare, and he even turned down a reunion in Magnolia because he hated the director so much.

However, there was a brief silver lining, which was more of a false dawn than anything else. In 1989, Reynolds deliberately shed his marquee leading man baggage for the first time to play a character part, accepting top billing in Scottish director Bill Forsyth’s Breaking In, albeit only after Nicholson and Paul Newman had passed.

Acting his age for once, the 1989 crime caper saw him playing an aging burglar with eyes on retirement, but only after he pulls off the fabled ‘one last job’. When he does, he accidentally discovers a protégé instead, with the unlikely duo forging a bond that finds the old-timer teaching the newcomer the tricks of the trade.

“No, it wasn’t a risk,” Gregory’s Girl director Forsyth told Film Talk of hiring Reynolds. “He had played the same roles successfully in those big movies for more than 15 years. There’s a certain point in your life as an actor when you are becoming older. Time is telling on you, so you can’t play the same action comedy roles, and also, you’re maturing. For him, it was time out after playing the endless Burt Reynolds type of roles.”

Admittedly, Breaking In was a flop, but it was nonetheless the star’s best-reviewed film since Semi-Tough, which was released 12 years previously. It was also his best performance in just as long, if not longer, and should have opened the door to a new era as a character man. What were his next headline roles? The woeful comedy Modern Love and the awful Cop and a Half, so not a single lesson was learned.

Source: The Scottish director who failed to salvage Burt Reynolds’ career