SUGARING SEASON (2012)
1) Magpie; 2) Dawn Chorus; 3)
Candles; 4) Something More Beautiful; 5) Call Me The Breeze; 6) Poison Tree; 7)
See Through Blue; 8) Last Leaves Of Autumn; 9) State Of Grace; 10) Mystery.
Beth Orton's first new album in seven years, and seven years without an
album is no laughing matter: if anything, it makes you predisposed to the idea
that maybe the artist really has something
to say, if it took him/her seven years to say it. On the other hand, everything
that we already knew about Beth Orton sort of predisposed us to the idea that
it would be rash to expect a good album from somebody who'd consciously ditched
her chief know-how in favor of a third-rate singer-songwriter career. All in
all, an intriguing situation — at least until you tear your gaze from the
pretty / intelligent profile on the sleeve cover and start playing the actual
music.
The best thing I can say about the music is
that it is at least significantly more involving than Comfort Of Strangers. The folksy arrangements are not as lethargic
or minimalistic this time around; there is a decent rhythm section that can
keep it steady or get in a little swing mode if necessary, there are some
dynamic string arrangements, and she seems to have spent more time working out
the hooks. In other words, the songs at least try to flutter and thrash around
rather than just sink to the bottom in one go. Unfortunately, about half of
them now end up sounding like uninventive imitations of early Joni Mitchell —
and once again, I have trouble understanding what exactly about them belongs to
Beth Orton, the Artist of Her Own Persuasion.
A whole three singles (as opposed to a maximum
of two) were culled from the album, so let us try and concentrate on these.
ʽSomething More Beautifulʼ is one of the slowest and «downiest» numbers on the
record — a transparent sign that «commercialism» is farther from the artist's
mind than ever before. Unfortunately, it is simply bad. Oversung (drenched in
breathy glottal stops — "in what you belee-hh-eeve" — so we do not make
a dreadful mistake thinking that the song was not recorded soon after a hysterical crying fit), overpunctuated by
Pathetic String Bursts at the start of each chorus, and yet lacking anything
resembling a proper hook, it's 100% atmosphere, pumped up after a traditional,
predictable recipé.
ʽMagpieʼ, which was used to open the album, is
a straightforward attempt at writing in the old folk style, musically and
lyrically, and since it does not pretend to the status of «grand tragedy», like
ʽSomething More Beautifulʼ does, it is far easier to enjoy, with a nice
«depressed-but-not-suicidal» flavor to the vocals. The major hookline
("what a lie, what a lie...") sounds like it's been lifted from The
Cranberries (in fact, as the years go by, Beth sounds more and more like a
technically weaker counterpart of Dolores O'Riordan), but when we are talking
folksy singer-songwriting, such observations can never be spoken in an
accusative tone anyway.
The third, and best, single was ʽCall Me The
Breezeʼ — not a J. J. Cale cover (as
fun as it would be for Beth to cover J. J. Cale), but an original composition,
something of a humble pantheistic anthem ("call me the earth, call me the
stars...") set to a lively folk-pop rhythm and peppered with light,
ghostly, but friendly vocals. Maybe if there were more songs like this on the
album, its diagnostic facial features would have finally begun to emerge — it
is like a soft «country rondeau» with a cool combination of guitars,
percussion, and electric organ and without any self-aggrandizing pathos to turn
off the seasoned listener.
Alas, such is not the case: the overall proportions
of bad to mediocre to nice on Sugaring
Season are more or less the same as in the singles subarray, and there is
no incentive for me to talk about the rest. Essentially, we are dealing here
with just another out of the miriad «neo-folk» records, which would have
probably sunk like a stone if not for the artist's enduring reputation that was
earned with far more interesting work — think Eric Clapton, if you wish, the
difference being that the latter could at least always offer redemption for his
tepid studio output on the stage, while Beth has pretty much disowned her
entire «folktronica» legacy and is now insisting on persisting as a second-rate
neo-folkie. Of course, seasoned lovers of this style will always find ten
thousand subtle reasons why Sugaring
Season has its own charm, quite different from that of Joni, Sandy, or
Emmylou — but I honestly see no sense in wrecking my brain over what any of
those reasons could be. As far as I'm concerned, she is simply not cut out for
this line of work.
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