Beth Orton released her long-awaited fifth album Sugaring Season last month. She tells Andy Welch about the making of her first record in six years, and reflects on how marriage and having children has changed her for the better.

 

In 2006, Beth Orton announced she was pregnant. Later that year, she cancelled the tour to promote her fourth album The Comfort Of Strangers on the advice of a doctor, and, aside from the odd, very low-key show here or there, disappeared from view.

Six years on, she's back with a new album, Sugaring Season, perhaps her most direct and confident sounding work.

So what happened in between?

The short answer is "lots". The long answer is a little more complicated...

"Comfort Of Strangers came out in February 2006, and for some reason I lost so much confidence," says Beth on her tour bus between Seattle and Vancouver.

"Not because it didn't sell well, or this, that and the other, I just felt very vulnerable at that time. The album changed a lot of things in my life. Lots of painful stuff came up, and it left me feeling vulnerable, so the idea of being out in the public was really scary."

She says she tried a few performances to test the water, but they left her "earth-shatteringly frightened" and undid things even further.

Being pregnant didn't agree with her either. "I thought it was the end of the world when I found out I was pregnant," she says. "I thought, 'What am I doing?' and for so many reasons.

"I was on my own, and I ended up moving to a house in the middle of nowhere in Norfolk (in Diss, not too far from where she grew up in Dereham) when Nancy was born, just the two of us."

Fearful she was losing herself in motherhood, Orton started writing at a frantic pace, desperate to cling on to something of her own. One of the songs that arrived during that time and made it onto Sugaring Season is called Last Trees Of Autumn.

"I felt like I was hanging on to the last shred of me, you know, your last leaves of autumn, but my body was coming on like the first shoots of spring. It was like I was slowly coming alive whether I liked it or not."

Then she met American singer songwriter Sam Amidon, whom she married last year. They have a son, Arthur, giving Orton the family she always wanted, but never thought she'd have.

The change in circumstance prompted more songs to flow out of Orton, and when it came to recording the album she called Tucker Martine, acclaimed producer and husband of Portland-based artist Laura Veirs. (Veirs's Carbon/Glacier is one of Orton's favourite-ever albums.)

Martine agreed to work with her, and the pair started planning which musicians they would invite to join the project, then Orton headed for Oregon with Sam, Nancy and newborn Arthur for a whistlestop recording session. Although they were in Portland for two weeks, they had just three days with the full band to get things done.

"I never felt like we had any time constraints, even though we only had those three days," she says. "It was that easy, and everyone was so excited. From the moment I walked into the studio, I loved it.

"It's very rare. It was like this serendipitous thing. I went in with 18 songs, and I loved every one of them, but it got quickly whittled down. If it didn't come together really quickly, we moved on."

Orton's confidence has now fully returned, even surpassing previous levels. For the first time since her career began aged 19, after being discovered by Madonna collaborator William Orbit, she's had time to play with music in a way she never has before.

Ever since debut Trailer Park propelled her to critical acclaim in 1997, everything Orton has written and recorded has been released, and subsequently scrutinised, but having disappeared from the public eye, dropped by her record label EMI, and with the thought at the back of her mind that she'd never again release any music, she says she felt more free than ever - "like a child playing in the mud for the first time".

"A journalist said to me recently that I sound really happy on Sugaring Season," says Orton. "And I went on at them for ages saying it wasn't that black and white, that there are ups and downs to being a parent and all that.

"But when I think about it, I recorded this new album with my four-month-old son asleep on the sofa next to me and husband and daughter in the next room.

"It was a really happy time. It was lovely, as all this has been. Creating a family is something I've always longed for, you know, a proper family with a husband and kids.

"It's not something I ever thought would happen, but it has. And it's amazing."


Extra time - Beth Orton

:: Elizabeth Caroline Orton was born on December 14, 1970, in East Dereham, Norfolk.

:: Her parents separated when she was 11, with her father passing away shortly afterward. Her mother died when she was 19.

:: Her first release was a Japan-only album made with William Orbit called SuperPinkMandy, named after a doll she bought at a jumble sale when she was six.

:: Her first full album was Trailer Park, released in 1996. It was earned her two Brit nominations, a Mercury Prize nomination and a reputation for being the queen of comedown music.

:: She won the Brit for best female artist in 2000, the year her album Central Reservation came out.

:: Sugaring Season is a reference to the time of year maple trees are tapped for syrup.


:: Beth Orton's fifth album Sugaring Season is out now. She begins a UK tour in Sheffield on November 27.


Tour dates

November:

27 - Sheffield City Hall

29 - Ashford, St Mary The Virgin,

30 - St Georges Church, Brighton

December:

5 - London Union Chapel

7 - Bristol Thekla

9 - Manchester Royal Northern College of Music

10 - Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms

11 - Cardiff Glee Club

13 - Glasgow Oran Mor