Central Reservation

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Album Information
EDITOR'S PICK

Total Tracks: 12   Total Length: 58:44

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Stunning

Squat

This is a record for the over and over and over playlist. Keep listening and you'll be reminded of something, someone, and somewhere.

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Great Trinity

TheSongRemains

A huge step into territory hinted at on "Trailer," Orton offer songs and sounds that come together in warm, sometimes spare, symmetry. Somehow, while there's less bouncy trip-hop-meets-folk, there's a modern edge to the tunes. Maybe timeless is a better term. Critics jabbed at her inclusion of two versions of "Central Reservation" as if she couldn't decide whether to chillout or folkout, missing the point that her music contains multitudes. Like the best downtempo/folk artists, she makes heartbreak a redemptive subject. Like Johnny Cash or the Velvet Underground, Orton is ultimately deeply on our side: there's grief to walk through in order to fully contemplate and appreciate the restoration of love or hope. At the heart of the production is a authentic respect for a Great Trinity: acoustic guitar, voice, and the song written for its own sake.

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They Say All Music Guide

On her stunning sophomore album, Central Reservation, Beth Orton slips free of the electronic textures that colored her acclaimed 1996 debut, Trailer Park, stripping her music down to its raw essentials to produce a work of stark simplicity and rare poignancy. With the exception of a pair of Ben Watt-produced tracks (“Stars All Seem to Weep” and a remix of the title cut), Central Reservation rejects synthetic sounds and beats altogether in favor of an organic atmosphere somewhere between folk, jazz, and the blues; the focal point is instead Orton’s evocatively soulful voice, which invests songs like “Sweetest Decline” and “Feel to Believe” with remarkable warmth and honesty. It’s a risky move creatively as well as commercially — after all, the club culture was the first to champion Orton’s talents — but it pays off handsomely; for all its brilliance, elements of Trailer Park already feel dated, but the new material possesses a timelessness that recalls the best of Nick Drake or Sandy Denny, with a haunting beauty to match. And while much has been made of the melancholy that pervades her music, ultimately Central Reservation is first and foremost a record about hope and survival; its emotional centerpiece, the seven-minute “Pass in Time” (a spine-tingling duet with legendary folk-jazz mystic Terry Callier), grapples with the death of Orton’s mother, but its underlying message of healing and perseverance is powerfully life-affirming — her music hasn’t merely discovered the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s now bathing in it. – Jason Ankeny

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