The Ground Above
Beth Orton
The Ground Above is Beth Orton’s 2026 album on Partisan Records, an eight‑song, 47‑minute cycle she has described as her most direct, urgent, and emotionally fearless work to date. Self‑produced like her 2022 record Weather Alive, it was crafted over roughly a year from live‑in‑the‑room recordings, keeping a loose, collective feel while Orton gradually sculpted the songs into expansive, timeless forms. Across tracks crowned by the title piece The Ground Above, she moves between whispered incantations and near‑primal wails, using a sound world of Rhodes piano, trumpet, guitars, and subtle electronics to explore survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and the ongoing decision to remain present in love, in art, and in the world.
Critics note that the album has a clear emotional arc: it begins in states of puzzled contemplation and spiritual disorientation, then gradually shifts toward a kind of hard‑won acceptance and transcendence. In the title track, Orton sings of feeling “invincible as grief” and “ecstatic as a mother’s love,” collapsing pain and joy into a single, elemental force that tears “through the ground to the sky above,” a line that mirrors the record’s broader concern with what lies just beyond everyday reality. Working with trusted collaborators such as multi‑instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, pianist Sam Beste, drummers Chris Vatalaro and Vishal Nayak, trumpeter Christos Stylianides, and bassist Tom Herbert, Orton extends the atmospheric, jazz‑tinged palette of Weather Alive into something even more embodied and cosmic, reinforcing her reputation as a kind of folk‑electronica poet who tunes into forces “too vast to take in all at once.”
The Ground Above is Beth Orton’s 2026 album on Partisan Records, an eight‑song, 47‑minute cycle she has described as her most direct, urgent, and emotionally fearless work to date. Self‑produced like her 2022 record Weather Alive, it was crafted over roughly a year from live‑in‑the‑room recordings, keeping a loose, collective feel while Orton gradually sculpted the songs into expansive, timeless forms. Across tracks crowned by the title piece The Ground Above, she moves between whispered incantations and near‑primal wails, using a sound world of Rhodes piano, trumpet, guitars, and subtle electronics to explore survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and the ongoing decision to remain present in love, in art, and in the world.
Critics note that the album has a clear emotional arc: it begins in states of puzzled contemplation and spiritual disorientation, then gradually shifts toward a kind of hard‑won acceptance and transcendence. In the title track, Orton sings of feeling “invincible as grief” and “ecstatic as a mother’s love,” collapsing pain and joy into a single, elemental force that tears “through the ground to the sky above,” a line that mirrors the record’s broader concern with what lies just beyond everyday reality. Working with trusted collaborators such as multi‑instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, pianist Sam Beste, drummers Chris Vatalaro and Vishal Nayak, trumpeter Christos Stylianides, and bassist Tom Herbert, Orton extends the atmospheric, jazz‑tinged palette of Weather Alive into something even more embodied and cosmic, reinforcing her reputation as a kind of folk‑electronica poet who tunes into forces “too vast to take in all at once.”
The Ground Above
Beth Orton
The Ground Above is Beth Orton’s 2026 album on Partisan Records, an eight‑song, 47‑minute cycle she has described as her most direct, urgent, and emotionally fearless work to date. Self‑produced like her 2022 record Weather Alive, it was crafted over roughly a year from live‑in‑the‑room recordings, keeping a loose, collective feel while Orton gradually sculpted the songs into expansive, timeless forms. Across tracks crowned by the title piece The Ground Above, she moves between whispered incantations and near‑primal wails, using a sound world of Rhodes piano, trumpet, guitars, and subtle electronics to explore survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and the ongoing decision to remain present in love, in art, and in the world.
Critics note that the album has a clear emotional arc: it begins in states of puzzled contemplation and spiritual disorientation, then gradually shifts toward a kind of hard‑won acceptance and transcendence. In the title track, Orton sings of feeling “invincible as grief” and “ecstatic as a mother’s love,” collapsing pain and joy into a single, elemental force that tears “through the ground to the sky above,” a line that mirrors the record’s broader concern with what lies just beyond everyday reality. Working with trusted collaborators such as multi‑instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, pianist Sam Beste, drummers Chris Vatalaro and Vishal Nayak, trumpeter Christos Stylianides, and bassist Tom Herbert, Orton extends the atmospheric, jazz‑tinged palette of Weather Alive into something even more embodied and cosmic, reinforcing her reputation as a kind of folk‑electronica poet who tunes into forces “too vast to take in all at once.”
The Ground Above is Beth Orton’s 2026 album on Partisan Records, an eight‑song, 47‑minute cycle she has described as her most direct, urgent, and emotionally fearless work to date. Self‑produced like her 2022 record Weather Alive, it was crafted over roughly a year from live‑in‑the‑room recordings, keeping a loose, collective feel while Orton gradually sculpted the songs into expansive, timeless forms. Across tracks crowned by the title piece The Ground Above, she moves between whispered incantations and near‑primal wails, using a sound world of Rhodes piano, trumpet, guitars, and subtle electronics to explore survival and renewal, motherhood and identity, political unease, and the ongoing decision to remain present in love, in art, and in the world.
Critics note that the album has a clear emotional arc: it begins in states of puzzled contemplation and spiritual disorientation, then gradually shifts toward a kind of hard‑won acceptance and transcendence. In the title track, Orton sings of feeling “invincible as grief” and “ecstatic as a mother’s love,” collapsing pain and joy into a single, elemental force that tears “through the ground to the sky above,” a line that mirrors the record’s broader concern with what lies just beyond everyday reality. Working with trusted collaborators such as multi‑instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, pianist Sam Beste, drummers Chris Vatalaro and Vishal Nayak, trumpeter Christos Stylianides, and bassist Tom Herbert, Orton extends the atmospheric, jazz‑tinged palette of Weather Alive into something even more embodied and cosmic, reinforcing her reputation as a kind of folk‑electronica poet who tunes into forces “too vast to take in all at once.”