There’s a particular kind of voice that doesn’t age so much as deepen, gathering weight with every passing year. Beth Orton has always had that quality, and on her new single ‘The Ground Above’, it feels more pronounced than ever.
Arriving without fanfare, the track marks her first new music since Weather Alive, and it carries the same sense of quiet reinvention. It begins in near stillness, Orton’s voice sitting front and centre, weathered but steady, before gradually opening outward into something more expansive. The shift isn’t abrupt, it unfolds, pulling the listener from introspection into a subtle lift that feels earned rather than imposed.
Orton’s career has long resisted easy categorisation. Emerging in the mid-90s through collaborations with figures like William Orbit and The Chemical Brothers, she helped define a space where folk and electronica could coexist without cancelling each other out. That “folktronica” tag has followed her ever since, though it never quite captures the full picture.
From the understated pull of Trailer Park to the BRIT-winning Central Reservation and the shifting textures of Kidsticks, Orton has consistently moved between forms without losing her centre. ‘The Ground Above’ feels like another step along that line, less concerned with reinvention than with refinement, a continuation of a voice that has learned how to hold both fragility and strength at once. Backseat Mafia caught Orton when she toured Australia in 2024.
It’s a return that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but lingers. The kind of song that reveals more the longer you sit with it.
