A few years ago, a friend was attempting to explain why he was divorcing his wife. He said they had grown apart. That they argued all the time. That she no longer laughed at his jokes. That, since the baby had arrived, they never went out, never did anything fun, just the two of them. “And you know, we don’t even like the same music,” he said. “We never have. Like, the other day, I played her the new Arcade Fire album, and she made me turn it off right in the middle of “Intervention.” She said it gave her a headache. Arcade Fire. She really does have horrible taste in music. I mean, she still listens to the radio.”
“So what?” I asked him. “Is that a good reason to end a marriage? Because your wife doesn’t like Canadian art-rock? (I had yet to join the Church of Arcade Fire myself, though The Suburbs would make me a believer in due time.)
My friend shrugged and stared into his glass of beer. “I don’t know,” he said. “I still love her, but I just don’t think I can be married to someone who likes Justin Timberlake.”
“You have a baby together,” I said. “Listen to ‘Neon Bible’ in your car when she’s not with you, and she can listen to Y100 or whatever bubblegum shit she’s into when she’s in hers. Trust me, that stuff doesn’t matter. It’s minor. You have a kid now. Your playlist is going to consist of nothing but Dan Zanes and Barney songs soon enough, anyway.”
There are few moments in my life when I can comfortably speak with anything resembling real expertise, but this was one of them. I know what it means to base a relationship on something as insignificant as taste in music. Worse, I know what it is to ruin one because of it. Worse still, I know what it’s like to have your own musical preferences used against you when the other person can’t summon the courage to say what really needs to be said, the most-honest thing, the harshest thing, but also the kindest thing, the thing that should be said first but is often said last, if at all: “I just don’t love you anymore.”
***
We were driving through Fort Lauderdale when I told my then-girlfriend that I wanted her to hear this British singer I had recently discovered. It was 1999. “Her name’s Beth Orton,” I said, with more than a hint of pride, “and she’s really outstanding. Wait till you hear her voice. It’s beautiful.”
Youtube Beth Orton Central Reservation
I slipped a CD into my truck’s stereo, and the cab filled with the sound of a sawing electric guitar, a mechanical drumbeat and Orton’s assertive, accented vocals. The song was “Stolen Car,” the lead track on Central Reservation, Orton’s second album. The music rose in intensity and volume, and Orton was right there with it, her voice swooping and soaring as she sang — but not oversang — about ignoring things that should not be ignored. “Why should I know better by now when I’m old enough not to?” goes one lyric, a riddle that doubles as a lie.
“Stolen Car” is about 5 1/2 minutes long. As the song came to a close, I glanced at my girlfriend, hoping to gauge her approval. For not the first time, I couldn’t read her face. The next song on the album, “Sweetest Decline,” is almost too pretty, a piano-laced ballad in which Orton drops the cool authority of “Stolen Car” and lets her voice relax into its natural, most lovely state. It’s a song about life, about letting oneself fall in love, and I’ve always imagined that Orton recorded it in a sunlit room, her tall frame swaying before a microphone stand by an open window, a breeze parting lace curtains as it made its way to settle upon her bright, freckled face.
“Sweetest Decline” is even longer than “Stolen Car” and this time, when it ended, my girlfriend finally spoke: “‘She weaves secrets in her hair’? ‘She’s deep as a well?’” she said, quoting Orton’s lyrics, but with disapproval that was impossible to miss. “God, how trite.”
“Trite? I don’t think she’s being trite,” I said, my voice betraying what I considered my own cool authority. I was, after all, a professional music critic for a regional magazine. Suddenly, hail was blowing through the window of Orton’s sunlit room.
“‘A new day is dawning’? ‘It’s like catching snow on my tongue’?” my girlfriend continued. “It’s like she wasn’t even trying to write a song. Tell me you don’t really like this.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: “Not even trying to write a song”? “Trite”? As the seductive but defiant “Couldn’t Cause Me Harm” began to play, I defended Orton’s use of clichés in “Sweetest Decline,” arguing that what my girlfriend perceived as laziness was, in fact, deliberate. And Orton was being casual — not lazy. The lyrics are as unhurried as the music, with the songwriter opening one verse as if she were simply carrying on a conversation over warm tea: “So, anyway, there I was, just sitting on your porch … ”
Flustered, I asked my girlfriend to listen to just one more song, “Pass in Time”, the album’s emotional centerpiece. It’s a devastating but ultimately uplifting examination of mortality and grief and it’s certainly the most-personal song on Central Reservation, if not the most-personal song in Orton’s entire catalog. The second verse is a crusher:
My mother told me just before she died,
My mother told me just before she died,
“Oh, darling, darling, don’t you be like me”
“You will fall in love with the very first man you meet.”
“But mother, mother, some will never know
“The love that you have is stored in my soul.”
My girlfriend sighed and looked out the passenger-side window. “I like you less for liking this,” she said.
***
About six years earlier, the summer before my senior year of college, I returned home to work for my father’s construction company and, with any luck, save up enough money to buy a cheap car, my first since high school. I didn’t have a girlfriend back in Gainesville and no former girlfriend in Fort Lauderdale with whom I could reunite. Because the job site was more than an hour away in Homestead, my dad and I had to leave the house by 5:30 in order to begin working by 7. Even though I was the boss’s son, I didn’t receive much in the way of special treatment. As he had for the past three summers, my dad gave me the crummiest job in construction: day laborer, which is just a phony euphemism for ditch digger.
Our workday ended at 3:30, but we wouldn’t get home until after 5. And following eight hours of stabbing a shovel into the Earth’s limestone-pocked flesh while absorbing the wrath of the South Florida sun, I’d be lucky if I had enough energy to stay awake past 7:30. My social life was shit. I could only see my friends, go surfing, or risk a hangover on the weekends.
So when a friend called me early one weeknight to tell me that his new girlfriend wanted to set me up with her neighbor, and that they were all going to meet at the Edge in a couple of hours, I told him to forget about it. I was beat. I had to get to sleep. “But she’s hot. Really hot,” my friend said. “She goes to UF, too, so maybe this could turn into something for you. Besides, I lied and told her you were cool, so at the very least you could show up and disappoint the girl.”
She was a year younger than me, a nursing student, a redhead, and, yes, really hot. She also was funny and charming and didn’t seem to mind that all that ditch digging had left my hands stippled with callouses and the skin underneath my fingernails tattooed with dirt. And when the four of us went out to dinner that Saturday, I thought this thing may just last into the school year. She even suggested as much.
And then, we got into my friend’s car and “The Wind Cries Mary” came on the radio.
“Turn it up,” I said and settled into the back seat, my shoulder resting against my would-be girlfriend’s arm. I closed my eyes and nodded along to the music.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
When I smiled, she poked me in the arm and said, “No, really, who is this? I like it.”
I sat up and looked at her. “You don’t know who this is? Honestly?”
“I don’t,” she said. “Should I?”
“Of course you should. It’s Jimi Hendrix. You’ve heard of Jimi Hendrix, right? Please tell me you’ve heard of Jimi Hendrix.”
She’d never heard of Jimi Hendrix. She’d also never heard of Superchunk, Fugazi, Screaming Trees, or any of the other bands I was into at the time. “But you’re in college.” I said to her, “Don’t you know any college rock?” She told me she didn’t listen to much “rock music.” She only listened to the radio. Believing this to be an intractable human failing on par with carrying the gene for webbed feet, living in a yurt, or loving the Boston Red Sox, I decided my future-girlfriend was now my never-girlfriend. After we arrived at her house, I walked her to her door, wished her good night, and never saw her again.
Why should I have known better by then when I was old enough not to?
***
It’s July 4, 2011, and I’m returning from the Keys with my fiancée and her teenage sons, my future step kids. We’d spent the weekend snorkeling, eating, and reading in plastic chairs that we’d pulled from the beach into the water. We were sunburned, tired, and reluctant for the weekend to be over. We didn’t talk much on the drive back to Miami, and at one point, I switched on a radio station I like, one that plays a decent mix of old folksongs, contemporary acoustic music, and low-key indie rock.
The kids, who are 15 and 13 years old, often complain about the music they hear in my truck: Wilco, Springsteen, the Hold Steady. These are artists their mom likes, as well, but the kids aren’t into rock. They listen to Pitbull, Ke$ha, the Black Eyed Peas, and obscure local hip-hop acts they discover on YouTube. They used to ask me to turn on Y100, the bubblegum station. “Anything but this stuff,” they’d say. “You know the rule, guys: my truck, my radio,” I’d say. Once, I thought I’d tease them by switching over to the Korean-language station. It didn’t work. They still ask to hear that station whenever they ride in the truck. Kids have a great way of turning jokes into boomerangs.
![Beth Beth](https://www.hifisentralen.no/forumet/attachments/musikk-generelt/222665-hva-ha-rer-du-pa-na-musikk-frank-zappa-freak-out.jpg)
So this night, as we entered Miami’s city limits and the late Vic Chesnutt drawled something profound and moving from deep within the radio, I expected to field a round of objections. But no one spoke. They just looked out the windows, watching fireworks shed colored teardrops all over the sky. The Vic Chesnutt song was followed by a Cowboy Junkies song, which was followed by a Red House Painters song, a Steve Earle song, and, finally, Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.” The sequencing was perfect and I was experiencing a moment of — dare I say it? — inner peace through depressing music.
“Oh, my God, this is my least favorite instrument in the whole world!” It was the 13-year-old. He was holding his forehead and groaning. “Please, Jake, turn this off. I hate the accordion!”
“Do you mean the harmonica?” I asked him.
“Yes. Whatever. Please, just turn it off. This is terrible.”
“This is Bob Dylan.”
“I don’t care. It’s awful.”
I caught his eyes in the rear-view mirror, reminded him of the rule, smiled, and let Dylan keep squawking on his harmonica. When the song was over I turned on the CD player. I’d recently started listening to Central Reservation again, and just as I reached to turn up the volume, right when Beth Orton began singing about a woman with secrets weaved in her hair, my fiancée asked, “Please, honey, can you put something else on? We’re all about to slit our wrists in here. Remember, we’re a family. We share the radio, no matter whose car we’re in.”
Without complaint, I turned on Y100. I know better by now. I can always listen to Central Reservation later.
Jake Cline is a writer and journalist based in Miami. You can follow him on Twitter at @jakeflorida. More from this author →
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Central Reservation | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 9 March 1999 | |||
Studio | The Church · September Sound · RAK · Olympic · Little Joey's · The Garden Shed | |||
Genre | Folktronica[1][2] | |||
Length | 58:50 | |||
Label | Heavenly Records – HVNLP 22 | |||
Producer | Victor Van Vugt, Ben Watt, Mark Stent | |||
Beth Orton chronology | ||||
|
Central Reservation is the second studio album by English singer-songwriter Beth Orton, released on 9 March 1999. The album featured contributions from folk musician Terry Callier (with whom she also recorded the b-side 'Lean on Me'), Dr. Robert and Ben Harper. Several tracks were also produced by Ben Watt of Everything but the Girl.
Central Reservation received critical acclaim and garnered Orton a second Mercury Music Prize nomination, and won her Best British Female at the 2000 BRIT Music Awards.
Release[edit]
Central Reservation was released on 9 March 1999 on Heavenly Records. It reached number 17 on the UK Albums Chart and stayed on the chart for eight weeks.[3] It went to number 34 on the ARIA albums chart in Australia,[4] number 35 on the RIANZ albums chart in New Zealand[5] and number 110 on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States.[6] It also went to number two on the US Heatseekers albums chart.[7] By 2002 it had sold 244,000 copies in United States. [8] The first single from the album was 'Stolen Car', which was released on 13 March 1999 and peaked at number 34 on the UK Singles Chart.[3] 'Central Reservation', the second single, peaked at number 37 on the UK Singles Chart.[3]
On 30 June 2014, British independent record label 3 Loop Music re-released Central Reservation as a 2CD Expanded Edition which included b-sides, original demos and live recordings.[9]
Reception[edit]
Professional ratings | |
---|---|
Aggregate scores | |
Source | Rating |
Metacritic | 84/100[10] |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [11] |
Entertainment Weekly | A−[12] |
Houston Chronicle | [13] |
Los Angeles Times | [14] |
NME | 8/10[15] |
Pitchfork | 8.9/10[16] |
Rolling Stone | [17] |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [18] |
Spin | 7/10[19] |
Uncut | [20] |
Central Reservation received generally positive reviews from critics. Jason Ankeny of AllMusic gave the album a rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 and called it 'stunning'.[11]
Orton won the award for British Female Solo at the 2000 BRIT Awards.[21] The album is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[22]
The album is ranked number 982 in All-Time Top 1000 Albums (3rd. edition, 2000) [23].
Track listing[edit]
All tracks written by Beth Orton except 'Love Like Laughter' by Orton and Ted Barnes. [11].
Standard edition | |||
---|---|---|---|
No. | Title | Producer(s) | Length |
1. | 'Stolen Car' | Victor Van Vugt | 5:26 |
2. | 'Sweetest Decline' | Van Vugt | 4:04 |
3. | 'Couldn't Cause Me Harm' | Van Vugt | 4:48 |
4. | 'So Much More' | Van Vugt | 5:41 |
5. | 'Pass in Time' | Bruce Robert Howard | 7:17 |
6. | 'Central Reservation' | Mark Stent | 4:50 |
7. | 'Stars All Seem To Weep' | Ben Watt | 4:39 |
8. | 'Love Like Laughter' | Van Vugt | 3:06 |
9. | 'Blood Red River' | David Roback | 4:15 |
10. | 'Devil Song' | Roback | 5:04 |
11. | 'Feel To Believe' | Orton | 4:02 |
12. | 'Central Reservation' (The Then Again Version) | Watt | 4:00 |
Japanese edition (bonus track) | |||
---|---|---|---|
No. | Title | Producer(s) | Length |
13. | 'Precious Maybe' | Orton | 4:02 |
Australian edition (bonus tracks) | |||
---|---|---|---|
No. | Title | Producer(s) | Length |
14. | 'Best Bit' | Youth | 4:03 |
15. | 'Central Reservation' (Spiritual Life/Ibadan edit) |
| 4:04 |
16. | 'Central Reservation' (William Orbit remix) | 4:43 |
Cherry Red Records expanded edition – Disc two | ||
---|---|---|
No. | Title | Length |
1. | 'Someone's Daughter' | |
2. | 'Sweetest Decline' | |
3. | 'Blood Red River' | |
4. | 'Pass in Time' | |
5. | 'She Cries Your Name' | |
6. | 'Devil Song' | |
7. | 'I Wish I'd Never Seen the Sunshine' | |
8. | 'Stars All Seem to Weep' | |
9. | 'I Love How You Love Me' | |
10. | 'Precious Maybe' | |
11. | 'Stars All Seem to Weep' (shed version) | |
12. | 'Central Reservation' (spiritual life ibadon remix) | |
13. | 'Love Like Laughter' | |
14. | 'So Much More' | |
15. | 'Central Reservation' (band demo) | |
16. | 'Couldn't Cause Me Harm' |
Notes
- ^a signifies remixer
Personnel[edit]
|
|
Charts[edit]
Chart (1999) | Peak position |
---|---|
Australian Albums (ARIA)[4] | 37 |
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[5] | 35 |
UK Albums (OCC)[3] | 17 |
US Billboard 200[6] | 110 |
Certifications and sales[edit]
Region | Certification | Certified units/Sales |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom (BPI)[25] | Gold | 100,000^ |
United States (RIAA)[27] | N/A | 244,000[26] |
Worldwide | N/A | 478,000[28] |
*sales figures based on certification alone |
References[edit]
- ^Lanham, Tom (6 June 2016). 'Beth Orton: Kidsticks and California Dreaming'. Paste. Retrieved 3 October 2016.
- ^Walsh, Ben (6 December 2012). 'Beth Orton, Union Chapel, London'. The Independent. Retrieved 9 October 2016.
- ^ abcd'Beth Orton'. Official Charts Company. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^ ab'Australiancharts.com – Beth Orton – Central Reservation'. Hung Medien. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^ ab'Charts.org.nz – Beth Orton – Central Reservation'. Hung Medien. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^ ab'Beth Orton Chart History (Billboard 200)'. Billboard. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^'Central Reservation – Beth Orton (Awards)'. AllMusic. Retrieved 7 September 2010.
- ^https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/76598/billboard-bits-gorillazd12-beth-orton-mudhoney
- ^'Beth Orton announces reissue of her 1999 Heavenly album 'Central Reservation''. Heavenly Records. 6 June 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
- ^'Reviews for Central Reservation by Beth Orton'. Metacritic. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^ abcAnkeny, Jason. 'Central Reservation – Beth Orton'. AllMusic. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^Brunner, Rob (26 March 1999). 'Central Reservation'. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^Chonin, Neva (28 March 1999). 'Beth Orton Still Suffering, But With a Clearer Eye'. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 19 April 2017.
- ^Hilburn, Robert (12 March 1999). 'Record Rack: A Hesitant Beth Orton Is Pulled in Two Directions'. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^Stubbs, David (10 March 1999). 'Beth Orton – Central Reservation'. NME. Archived from the original on 17 August 2000. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
- ^Fowler, Shan. 'Beth Orton: Central Reservation'. Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 11 October 2000. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^Sheffield, Rob (18 March 1999). 'Beth Orton: Central Reservation'. Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 30 April 2008. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^Sheffield, Rob (2004). 'Beth Orton'. In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. p. 608. ISBN0-7432-0169-8.
- ^Clover, Joshua (March 1999). 'All Folked-Up'. Spin. 15 (3): 139–40. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
- ^'Beth Orton: Central Reservation'. Uncut (22). March 1999.
- ^Sturges, Fiona (28 March 2003). 'Beth Orton: No More Reservations'. The Independent. Retrieved 7 September 2010.
- ^Dimery, Robert, ed. (2010). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition. Universe. ISBN0-7893-2074-6.
- ^'Rocklist'. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
- ^ abc'Central Reservation – Beth Orton (Credits)'. AllMusic. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^'British album certifications – Beth Orton – Central reservation'. British Phonographic Industry.Select albums in the Format field.Select Gold in the Certification field.Type Central reservation in the 'Search BPI Awards' field and then press Enter.
- ^iegler, Dylan (1 March 2002). 'Billboard Bits: Gorillaz/D12, Beth Orton, Mudhoney'. Billboard. p. 20. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
- ^'American album certifications – Beth Orton – Central reservation'. Recording Industry Association of America.If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Album, then click SEARCH.
- ^'Brit Awards: Controversial As Ever'. Billboard. 18 March 2000. p. 85. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
Central Reservation
Central Reservation, her second album (proper), helped Beth build on the success of her début. Although retaining the electronic edge of the former, this record showed a notably more acoustic side with several tracks consisting purely of Beth's vocal accompanied by a solitary acoustic guitar, with subject matters becoming more introspective, including 'Pass in Time', a song about the death of her mother. Despite this style, the album still provided more polished moments such as lead single 'Stolen Car' and the electro melancholy of 'Stars All Seem to Weep', or the jazz-and-strings-tinged 'Sweetest Decline', songs which cut a much deeper mark than the more glossy feel of her debut. The album also featured notable contributions from folk musician Terry Callier, Dr. Robert and Ben Harper. Two tracks were also produced by Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl.
The album earned Orton a second Mercury Music Prize nomination and the Best Female Artist award at the 2000 BRIT Awards.
Album Versions & Formats | |||
(click on an image for more information) | |||
LP- UK - HVNLP22 | CD - UK - HVNLP22CD | ||
CASSETTE - UK - HVNLP22MC | PROMOCD - UK - HVNLP22CDP |
CD - JAPAN - BVCP-21047 | PROMOCD - JAPAN - BVCP-21047 |
PROMO CASSETTE - JAPAN | PROMOCD - US - ARCD-9038 |
LP- US - RTH2011 | CD - AUS - 74321734792 |
TOUR CD - AUS - 74321734792 | PROMO CD - UK - BETH002 |
PROMO CDR- UK | PROMO CDR (EMI)- UK |
PROMO CDR (EMI) - UK | PROMO CDR - US | ||
PROMO CD - US - ARCD-9038 | CD - TAIWANESE | ||
PROMO CDR - US | LP- US - 88843003581 |