Into The Music
Beth Orton has always been difficult to categorize, which is probably why she keeps making records that feel like they exist outside of any particular moment. Her new single “The Ground Above,” released March 31 via Partisan Records, is her first music since 2022’s Weather Alive, and it arrives as if time genuinely doesn’t apply to her.
The song runs eight minutes. It doesn’t build toward a climax so much as deepen gradually, starting with a spare piano figure and Orton’s weathered, unhurried voice, then drawing in trumpet, bass, and atmospheric guitar as it moves through what feels less like a traditional song structure and more like a slowly shifting landscape. Shahzad Ismaily, who played on Weather Alive, is here again, alongside drummer Vishal Nayak, pianist Sam Beste, trumpeter Christos Stylianides, and guitarists Grey McMurray and Dave Okumu.
Orton has spoken about the song in terms of trying to “iron out my brain like a map,” tracing layers of memory and meaning through music rather than explaining them directly. That description fits the experience of listening to “The Ground Above,” which communicates something it never quite names, an ambient kind of grief or wonder, the feeling of standing somewhere meaningful and not being able to say exactly why.
She has one of the most underappreciated voices in contemporary folk and indie music. British by origin but long since untethered from any particular scene, she emerged in the mid-90s making trip-hop adjacent music with acts like the Chemical Brothers and Air, then pivoted toward singer-songwriter territory with records that kept confounding expectations. Weather Alive was received as something of a late-career high point, stark and absorbing in ways her earlier work wasn’t.
An album is reportedly on the way. If “The Ground Above” is any indication of where she’s headed, it will reward the kind of attention most records don’t ask for anymore. Eight-minute singles with no hook and no obvious payoff are a specific kind of commitment to make as a lead single in 2026. The fact that she made it anyway says everything about the kind of artist she is.
ok eight minutes?? beth orton said NO SKIPPING 😠I haven’t really been into her stuff but “difficult to categorize” is literally my favorite description for any artist, that’s the good stuff. adding to the playlist immediately 🎧
Eight minute single is a bold move and I respect it, but I’d push back on “difficult to categorize” being treated like a compliment by default. The East LA sound I grew up with was very specifically categorized, and that specificity is exactly what made it matter to the community it came from. Being uncategorizable sometimes just means nobody’s written your history yet.
I just looked up Beth Orton and apparently I’ve been sleeping on her since 1996! Spotify just took me down a whole rabbit hole , Central Reservation is incredible. How did I miss this for 30 years?? I love that I’m still discovering artists like this. Eight minutes sounds perfect honestly.
Eight minutes and I am HERE for it honestly. People act like song length is some kind of moral question but some of the catchiest, most emotionally satisfying music of the last thirty years has been long-form , and Beth Orton has always known exactly how to hold your attention. “Difficult to categorize” plus “eight minutes” sounds like a feature not a bug to me. Already added it to my rotation.
Eight minutes is either earned or it is self-indulgence. I will reserve judgment until I’ve heard it.