Beth Orton – Trailer Park (1996)

Beth Orton – Trailer Park

At 26 years old Beth Orton emerges on “She Cries Your Name” as a seasoned veteran, sounding as though she had written and ripped up several pages before settling on what she believes the perfect pop chorus would be to deliver to a thirty year old in 1996. In realty, her boyfriend William Orbit had an enormous effect on the song and on Orton herself and it is most likely the confluence of their styles that provided the groundbreaking mix of 60’s California pop and the then contemporary folktronica flourishes that define Trailer Park. More so than his actual contributions, it is the product of Orbit's relationship with Orton that launched her musical career and although technically her second release, even she agrees to eschew Superpinkymandy in favor of a proper beginning. That first record proved to be more of an Orbit record that Beth had sung on, an album where she gained footing and confidence and for lack of a better term, found her voice. Trailer Park is different, it is a modern and vibrant album, and one that sounds unlike much else released that year, with the possible exception of Cat Power’s What Would the Community Think? Orton’s voice, much like Chan Marshall’s, was sewn in between each song and layered on top of a multitude of genres in a way that challenged what most American’s thought a singer-songwriter could do. Trailer Park owes much of that success and its reputation to Andrew Weatherall, the producer who according to Orton was hand selected for his contribution to Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, a sound that certainly appears throughout the record, if not in more measured form here. Despite the critical acclaim, the greatest product of Trailer Park is that it laid the foundation for Orton’s career, more than most debut albums do, proving to the world, as well as to Orton herself, that she had staked a claim in the musical landscape.

~8.0

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