For Beth Orton, growing up as an artist was never going to be seamless.

The early version of Orton became something of a cultural touchstone. Her music soundtracked dawns and comedowns, fragility and tenderness, arriving at a moment when a generation, many for the first time, were learning how to feel. "My music was there for people as the sun came up and they came down," Orton muses. "I was the soundtrack to a vulnerability that belonged to a particular time." She understands how seductive it can be for an artist to want to remain preserved there.

For more than 30 years, Beth Orton has been our antenna to the cosmos, the poet laureate of forces too vast to take in all at once. Her records arrive patiently, unified by emotional focus rather than any single musical style. From the pioneering folktronica of 1996's Trailer Park to the earthy classic-rock miniatures of 2006's Comfort of Strangers through 2022's self-produced Weather Alive, she has built a catalog that exists proudly out of time, each album its own planet in an ever-expanding solar system.

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