Brit Folk

The Watersons, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Kate Rusby, Jake Bugg, The Unthanks

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 Day Fairport Convention’s Bus Crashed, Killing Martin Lamble

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May 12, 1969 bus crash killed Fairport Convention drummer Martin Lamble and severely injured other members of the group.

As the summer of 1969 approached, the future looked bright for Fairport Convention, as their second album, What We Did on Our Holidays, expanded the band’s audience with a more rock-inflected version of their folk sound. But an awful tragedy nearly destroyed the band just as all their hard work was starting to pay off.

In the early morning hours of May 12, as the group traveled back from a celebratory gig in Birmingham shortly after wrapping up work on their next album, their van veered off the road — and in the aftermath of the crash, Fairport Convention would never be the same. The wreck killed drummer Martin Lamble, who was just 19 at the time, as well as fashion designer and magazine columnist Jeannie Franklyn, who’d been dating guitarist Richard Thompson. Thompson suffered a broken shoulder and bassist Ashley Hutchings was sent to the hospital with assorted serious injuries, while guitarist Simon Nicol, who’d been sleeping on the floor of the vehicle when it went off the road, escaped with a concussion.

“Our road manager and sound guy, Harvey Bramham, did most of the driving although I’d do a bit to relieve him. On this particular gig, he’d been feeling peaky all day, quite unwell,” explained Nicol in a post on the Fairport Convention website. “I had a bad migraine so I wasn’t in a seat; I was stretched out on the floor with a blanket over my head trying to sleep off this terrible headache. When I woke up, the van was doing things which didn’t involve the wheels being in contact with the ground: when it stopped moving, I was the only one left. All the gear had gone out of the back and all the people had gone out through the windows and doors.”

With the release of their next album mere weeks away, the members of the group had to decide whether they could even carry on as a unit. “That was a big watershed, I think. In the aftermath, we thought a lot about what to do, whether to call it a day. It had been fun while it lasted but it took a definite effort of will to continue,” recalled Nicol. “It had given us a lot but now it had taken away a lot: was it worth it if it was going to cost people their lives?”

“We were totally fractured, in more ways than one,” Hutchings told the Guardian. “It seemed like I was in hospital for months. When I woke up at the side of the M1, I thought I’d lost my sight. As it was, it was just that both eyes were terribly cut and bruised, and eventually, that improved. But I had a broken nose, broken cheekbone, a lot of head injuries, a broken pelvis, a bad ankle injury. All of those things took a long time to heal. People were asking us about the future, but we couldn’t conceive of planning one.”

“We were very traumatized,” added Thompson. “And there was this feeling: ‘Should we carry on? Has the stuffing been knocked out of us?’ But eventually, we made a conscious effort. We got together and said, ‘Yes, we are carrying on.'” As Nicol put it, “We all felt psychologically traumatized as well as being damaged physically. But by the time Ashley’s face was back together and Richard’s bones were healing, we’d decided to rebuild the band and carry on.”

While Fairport Convention handled the last few bits of work to prepare their third LP, Unhalfbricking, for its July 1969 release, DJ John Peel hosted a benefit concert featuring Family, Pretty Things, and Soft Machine on May 25 to raise money for Lamble and Franklyn’s families. While they soldiered on, the pall of the accident continued to loom; as Hutchings later told the Guardian, he can’t even look at the cover of Unhalfbricking without thinking about the tragedy. “My memory of it is bound up with the terrible car crash. On the back cover we’re all eating around a table. The shirt and the leather waistcoat I’m wearing are what I had on when the crash happened. I can clearly remember them being bloodstained,” he explained. “You don’t forget things like that.”

In fact, although the group soon found a new drummer in Dave Mattacks and rebounded to create one of their most successful albums with Liege & Lief later that year, Hutchings was on his way out of the band. “I believe the crash hung over the band in unseen ways,” mused Nicol. “I think it was one of the unspoken reasons for the next big change, when Ashley decided to leave the band later that year after we had recorded Liege & Lief and relaunched the band to some fanfare and acclaim. Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn’t continue with us.”

Fairport Convention’s lineup would continue to change quite a bit over the years, but aside from a hiatus between 1979-’85, they’ve continued to tour and record steadily — and although Nicol is the only original member left, he wouldn’t mind seeing the Fairport name continue after he’s gone. “I’d like Fairport to become the first band to be like a male voice choir, carrying on through changes of personnel but retaining its identity,” he wrote on the band’s site.

“After all, no one bats an eyelid about a brass band playing on long after all the original members are gone. Why shouldn’t there be a Fairport Convention in fifty or a hundred years?”

Source: The Day Fairport Convention’s Bus Crashed, Killing Martin Lamble