"Thank you for giving me my own vagina to climb into every night."
This was Beth Orton's way of shouting out her sound tech for giving her "warm and inviting" music to play to on her tour, which wrapped up on Tuesday at the Hollywood Theatre in Vancouver.
Orton herself was warm and inviting; perched at her keyboard centre stage, she faced the audience in direct conversation. She got so caught up in banter that she periodically mixed up her facts; in one particularly egregious instance, the English songwriter committed the mortal sin of forgetting she was in Canada and not the US. "It's all the same to me. What can I say? Cancel me!" she joked.
At the onset, the entirely seated audience displayed polite reverence, applauding genially only at the end of each song. But Orton's levity soon thawed their frost — unable to contain her excitement about finally getting to play her Jim O'Rourke collaboration "Comfort of Strangers" live, which she didn't get to do when the song came out in 2006 because she became pregnant, she sped (and fumbled) through introducing the song. "Do it!" a fan shouted in good fun, and Orton obliged with the most rocking song in her set. Though her voice often barely broke above a croak on songs like "Friday Night," she absolutely sprang to life during "Comfort of Strangers."
Orton and her five-piece band, which included the evening's opener, Heather Woods Broderick, pulled the audience into their orbit with an absorbing performance that often made time seem to stand still. Orton conjured the spirit of Nick Drake as her acoustic strums strolled alongside flute and sax on "Sweetest Decline," while her solo turns — accompanied by little else than a slide guitar on "Pass in Time" — evoked living legend Joni Mitchell. At her most intense, Orton even mirrored her '90s contemporary PJ Harvey.
Orton also brought the boogie with "Fractals," a rubbery, deep-grooving fan favourite and the most kinetic song on her eighth album, this year's Weather Alive. The evening's energy teetered back and forth, balancing out with the night's most captivating songs, including Weather Alive's title track and "Unwritten."
Due to health issues including seizures that cause disorientation and memory loss, time has a become a blur to Orton, a tangle of moments with no clear chronology; her increasingly impressionistic lyrics reflect that disorientation. But at the Hollywood Theatre, she was present and at ease. "I want to savour every moment. This is the most beloved tour I've ever been on," she told the audience.
For Orton, lockdown during the pandemic was a levelling force. "It was like I fell into time," she recently told Exclaim!, describing a sense of alignment during an otherwise destabilizing time. And as the world turned around her, there she was onstage at the Hollywood Theatre, in sync with her rapt admirers — together weathered, together alive.
This was Beth Orton's way of shouting out her sound tech for giving her "warm and inviting" music to play to on her tour, which wrapped up on Tuesday at the Hollywood Theatre in Vancouver.
Orton herself was warm and inviting; perched at her keyboard centre stage, she faced the audience in direct conversation. She got so caught up in banter that she periodically mixed up her facts; in one particularly egregious instance, the English songwriter committed the mortal sin of forgetting she was in Canada and not the US. "It's all the same to me. What can I say? Cancel me!" she joked.
At the onset, the entirely seated audience displayed polite reverence, applauding genially only at the end of each song. But Orton's levity soon thawed their frost — unable to contain her excitement about finally getting to play her Jim O'Rourke collaboration "Comfort of Strangers" live, which she didn't get to do when the song came out in 2006 because she became pregnant, she sped (and fumbled) through introducing the song. "Do it!" a fan shouted in good fun, and Orton obliged with the most rocking song in her set. Though her voice often barely broke above a croak on songs like "Friday Night," she absolutely sprang to life during "Comfort of Strangers."
Orton and her five-piece band, which included the evening's opener, Heather Woods Broderick, pulled the audience into their orbit with an absorbing performance that often made time seem to stand still. Orton conjured the spirit of Nick Drake as her acoustic strums strolled alongside flute and sax on "Sweetest Decline," while her solo turns — accompanied by little else than a slide guitar on "Pass in Time" — evoked living legend Joni Mitchell. At her most intense, Orton even mirrored her '90s contemporary PJ Harvey.
Orton also brought the boogie with "Fractals," a rubbery, deep-grooving fan favourite and the most kinetic song on her eighth album, this year's Weather Alive. The evening's energy teetered back and forth, balancing out with the night's most captivating songs, including Weather Alive's title track and "Unwritten."
Due to health issues including seizures that cause disorientation and memory loss, time has a become a blur to Orton, a tangle of moments with no clear chronology; her increasingly impressionistic lyrics reflect that disorientation. But at the Hollywood Theatre, she was present and at ease. "I want to savour every moment. This is the most beloved tour I've ever been on," she told the audience.
For Orton, lockdown during the pandemic was a levelling force. "It was like I fell into time," she recently told Exclaim!, describing a sense of alignment during an otherwise destabilizing time. And as the world turned around her, there she was onstage at the Hollywood Theatre, in sync with her rapt admirers — together weathered, together alive.
