English songwriter Beth Orton has released a new single called “The Ground Above”, her first new music since the sensational 2022 album Weather Alive.
The new track is an eight minute salvo in which we hear Orton in full control of her abilities. We start in a fairly spare setting where her grizzled vocal unfolds some immediately captivating images (“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”) that vivdly expand across the broad canvas presented by her piano and atmospheric guitar. Ever so patiently, “The Ground Above” builds from a small bluster into an emotional storm, the images forming into personal memories that the mind grip gently but firmly: “Remember when we hitched that ride / Dancing in the full beam light / Remember when I thought that I could change”. As trumpet and driving bass subtly imbue the song, Orton spins away from the past and into the urgent present: “Come on lift me higher / I want to touch the sky / Come on wipe me out”.
Watch the visualizer for “The Ground Above” below or find the song on streamers.
“The Ground Above” is out via Partisan. You can find Beth Orton on Instagram.
