STACK #139 May 2016

MUSIC REVIEWS

visit stack.net.au

INTERVIEW

continued

BETH ORTON

Q1/ You’ve used references to motion a lot in speaking about Kidsticks – do you mean it was a bodily, corporeal motion that inspired you, or a more theoretical/mental motion? I was driven by the energy of the music and the energy of changing countries. Moving to LA had a propulsion and an excitement, and I needed to shake things up. I didn’t start the record with that expectation but looking back I needed to shift energy in my life and in my body. Q2/ There is so much incredible tuned (and untuned) percussion on this album, particularly on Corduroy Legs . How much time did you have to experiment with these kinds of sounds? When Andy [Hung, co-producer] and I got in the studio I had no preconceived ideas of what would happen in there. I played the synth and as I did so Andy would be on Massive going through presets. As he went through the sounds we would egg each other on. Sometimes my husband would pop by and he’d hear these insane, loud sounds coming from the garage we were working in, and then on entering he’d find us giggling like kids whilst being all British and polite to each other at the same time: “I quite like that,” and so on. Q3/ Moon is beautiful. It's intriguing how the moon influences our bodily rhythms; it’s like magic, but it’s just accepted by everyone. Why are celestial bodies inspiring to you? Beth Orton waxes poetic and philosophical about her seventh studio album Kidsticks .

I know! It amazes me how we wander around doing all this mundane stuff whilst meanwhile everything we do is due to the push and pull of planets in a galaxy we have no conscious awareness of. That our feet are on the ground and our heads in space... If I stop and think it’s still too enormous to contemplate. Sometimes though, my perception shifts in just the right way and I get a glimpse and a sense of the enormity of it all and when that happens it never fails to inspire me to write about it. Moon is a simple idea: the idea that we are all ruled by the exact same forces and as powerless as the next to do anything about it. Q4/ The lyrics on Petals are very intriguing. Tell us some more about this track. Petals is a song about grief. When you become so still in a room you are barely there anymore. You become part of the upholstery, just another inanimate object. When you are this still the room sort of sighs and gets on with its hidden life. I had this experience... it was like I describe it in the song, basically. The petals fell from their stems like it was a decision that had been made between them, a synchronised

movement. I’m trying to describe the beauty in what I saw, in that moment of paralysed pain that tips into an acknowledgment. Q5/ You were only a baby in 1973. What do the early ‘70s mean to you? With this track [ 1973 ] I was reminded of Blondie and Talking Heads. I would feel what it was like to listen to them and I sang out with that feeling in me. I wanted this to be a playful track. These are the words and the melody that fell out of me. I like the nonsensical nature of singing about a time that I wasn’t there for. Aren’t all songs and all memories a jumble of times and places we claim to have been? Grains of truth and fantasy all up against each other, living quite happily.

Kidsticks by Beth Orton is out May 27 via ANTI.

MUSIC

FOY VANCE

Q3/ I’m pretty sure I can hear your piano stool creaking in Bangor . Do you make sure not to suck those little signs of life out of your recordings? I’ve always been a fan of the Lomax recordings and any recording made in a natural environment, so I guess that bleeds into my own music making. I like it when it feels real, and I hate it when it feels cleaned up and homogenised. Things are what they are and there is truth in that, so best to leave it alone for the most part. Q4/ When playing live, you often ask the audience to sing the long drone note in The Wild Swans On The Lake – when did you begin that tradition? I’ve always been a fan of unified voices whether in old gospel music or folks at a festival screaming out the chorus to a well-known tune. I enjoy moments on gigs where we all sing together. It makes it less about what’s going on on stage, and more about what’s going on in the room. In those

INTERVIEW

moments we’re all making music together and that’s a really uniting feeling. Q5/ What do you think about someone as young as Ed Sheeran being in a position to sign someone like yourself, who’s been performing professionally since Ed was a kid? I think it is a sign of his tenacity, drive and ambition to succeed paying off. Him signing me I see as a testament to his genuine support of the music I make. He has put his hard-earned money where his mouth is and I don’t know too many people who do that with such ease. There is a one man revolution for you if ever I saw one.

Q1/ You use some amazing pedal steel throughout the album; is it an instrument you were automatically drawn to early in your musical career, as a natural progression from guitar? Anyone that doesn’t appreciate a good bit of pedal steel isn’t worth appreciating. I’ve always been a fan since ever I heard my dad playing country music around the house. It was the one instrument I could never tell right out of the gate what it was. It’s an ethereal instrument. Q2/ What kind of instruments are in that swelling synth-string blend in She Burns ? Well, I could say that there are a mixture of instruments making that sound, and that the only thing I remember [is] that every instrument playing during that section remained on the same note, and relied solely on dynamics. However the truth is that I used magic.

The inimitable Irish singer- songwriter releases The Wild Swan this month.

The Wild Swan by Foy Vance is out May 13 via Warner.

MAY 2016

06

jbhifi.com.au