So Beth Orton’s seventh album Kidsticks was released at the end of May so once again this post about it is months after it was released. I do like to take my time with new albums. Now I have to say it’s one of her best and basically is her most enjoyable since 1999‘s Central Reservation and 1996’s Trailer Park albums. After those two album she has done a pretty good trilogy of albums with 2012’s Sugaring Season, 2006’s Comfort Of Strangers and 2002’s Daybreaker which if you wanted to call them something they’re kind-off the folkie albums. Those early album are pretty much two of my fave albums of the late 90’s by anyone. Kidsticks is maybe not as great as those two early ones off course but I do think is better than those last three albums. It’s just so much different to well, everything she done I really. When Beth tour here in Australia last on that SS album she played at a church, if someone will book her this time it needs to be some dark/dirty nightclub or something like that. Anyway after all these acoustic folk albums, what can she do now? Well, if you don’t know yet, she just gone back to her electronic early roots, that’s what!
I guess posting something about a new album a few months after it’s been released you have a little bit of time to also see the reaction including the fans, the press, everyone else and see what happens when like in the promo video by the artist backfiring and the backlash on them which then makes their new album pretty much disappear or just be totally written off. It’s a crying shame because it’s a such a great album, just because Beth spray paints some tree in a desert somewhere in USA. Bloody septic tanks, hippies and greenies on social media, why are you even on the internet? It’s so punk, you know? Spray painting a Yank protected plant, I guess it’s a bit silly really but I did just say punk. What would an English woman know in a American desert anyway? Didn’t she have tour guide with her? Didn’t the film director know? Maybe the whole crew was English too or something. Maybe she just did it just to get back at U2 because you can’t spray paint Bono’s face, second best thing is a Joshua Tree.
Anyway jokes aside maybe doing the whole u-turn of the new album didn’t really help too, after so long doing the folkie thing, did it alienate all her fans with this album, I don’t know? But I love it when artists start throwing curve balls. It seems more people say just WTF is this? I hate it! or something. Some of the reviews seem to be saying that at the time even if they understand her debut album was electronic. For me it’s really the kind off album I’ve been waiting and/or wanting Beth Orton to make since the late 90’s, it’s only just taken sixteen years for it happen, not that long really. So now it’s here I’ve been enjoying it so much lately, sometimes just having it on for hours on repeat. I love her even more now because of Kidsticks.
Collaborating with Andrew Hung from the Fuck Buttons has worked out great, a wicked person for her to with work with on this and the production is amazing to listen too. Such an exciting album to listen from beginning to end. This is her LA album too, strange things seem to happen in LA recording studios, have notices that? A fun fact is this is the third album she recorded in America, Portland was where she did the last one and New York City the one before that and the rest where done in the U.K. I don’t know if it really matters where artists record albums but I find it interesting at least, maybe someone else does too? The ten tracks on the album does have a totally great flow and it’s just so beautiful, that’s what I mean by exciting and I really can’t pick fave track/s from the whole album but to finish off now below is just one of the highlights from the album, a track called 1973 and yet another fun fact is Beth was born in Dec. 1970. I’m going to have to rated Kidsticks four and three quarter out of five.
a1000mistakes 