Product Description
Brand New ~ Sealed! Limited Edition 180 Gram Double Set On Pillar Box Red Vinyl! Released Exclusively For Record Store Day, 2022. Back On Vinyl For The First Time In Over 20 Years! The Gorgeous 1999 Album From Beth Orton, ‘Central Reservation’ Features Guests Ben Harper, Dr. John & Ben Watt.
‘Central Reservation’ makes a welcome return to vinyl having not been available outside the US since its release in 1999. The album which saw Beth win a BRIT Award and a Mercury Prize nomination is presented as a limited edition pillar box red colour.
Side 1:
Stolen Car
Sweetest Decline
Couldn’t Cause Me Harm
Side 2:
So Much More
Pass In Time
Central Reservation
Side 3:
Stars All Seem To Weep Beats
Love Like Laughter
Blood Red River
Side 4:
Devil Song
Feel To Believe
Central Reservation (The Then Again Version)
AMG –
A timeless work of stark simplicity, rare poignancy and haunting beauty! On her stunning sophomore album, Central Reservation, Beth Orton slips free of the electronic textures that colored her acclaimed 1996 debut, Trailer Park, stripping her music down to its raw essentials to produce a work of stark simplicity and rare poignancy. With the exception of a pair of Ben Watt-produced tracks ("Stars All Seem to Weep" and a remix of the title cut), Central Reservation rejects synthetic sounds and beats altogether in favor of an organic atmosphere somewhere between folk, jazz, and the blues; the focal point is instead Orton's evocatively soulful voice, which invests songs like "Sweetest Decline" and "Feel to Believe" with remarkable warmth and honesty. It's a risky move creatively as well as commercially -- after all, the club culture was the first to champion Orton's talents -- but it pays off handsomely; for all its brilliance, elements of Trailer Park already feel dated, but the new material possesses a timelessness that recalls the best of Nick Drake or Sandy Denny, with a haunting beauty to match. And while much has been made of the melancholy that pervades her music, ultimately Central Reservation is first and foremost a record about hope and survival; its emotional centerpiece, the seven-minute "Pass in Time" (a spine-tingling duet with legendary folk-jazz mystic Terry Callier), grapples with the death of Orton's mother, but its underlying message of healing and perseverance is powerfully life-affirming -- her music hasn't merely discovered the light at the end of the tunnel, it's now bathing in it.