Music downloading services have helped put a stop to this, but in the old, misty days of maybe five or ten years ago, at least several times a year, someone would come out with a single. It’d be a pretty catchy single, and maybe it’d get played on alternative radio, back before Clear Channel bought everything and pushed real alternative radio, the kind that’s not just an endless string of All-American Rejects songs, into the hazy reaches of satellite radio and the Internet. A bunch of people who’d never heard of the artist would all go and buy the album. Two weeks later, they’d be back at the record shop — this is back when there was such a thing as record shops, remember — and as they sold it back to the clerk for $2.50 in store credit, they’d angrily say something like, “Do you realize the rest of this album sounds nothing like the single?”
Central Reservation is pretty much that album. The lead single, “Stolen Car,” was a snarling piece of guitar rock that was beautiful, and sad, and extremely memorable, and not only bore little resemblance to any of Beth Orton’s previous career, but didn’t sound much like the rest of Central Reservation either. Most of the remainder of Central Reservation is languid, down-tempo music. Orton’s previous album, Trailer Park, might have positioned her as the standard bearer of the “folktronica” movement, but Central Reservation is a lot less -tronica and a lot more folk, though it still retains a few synthesizer touches here and there, and a trip-hop sensibility, if not a trip-hop sound, per se.
The most important thing that the album retains from Orton’s past, besides Orton’s aching voice, is a sense of carefulness regarding the arrangements. The strings, acoustic guitars, upright basses, vibraphones, and various keyboards that surround each song are placed with deliberate precision, never calling undue attention to themselves, but never failing to maximize the impact of the song. Something like “Couldn’t Cause Me Harm,” with its clever percussion track, deep bass, and echoing, shimmering vibraphone hook, betrays an almost Brian Wilson-like attention to detail. Central Reservation is a whole album of what Wilson used to call “pocket symphonies.”
This would be of little importance without songs to hang the arrangements on, and Central Reservation contains what is probably Orton’s finest display of songwriting. The melodies on “Devil Song” and “Blood Red River” soar and swoop in all the right places, the perfect vehicles for the instrumentation. Orton’s lyrics too are her best evocation of her lonely but unbroken persona.
Maybe the best example of this is on the final song, the “Then Again Version” of the title track, the original version of which shows up in the middle of the CD. It’s an old, annoying dance-music trick to toss in a completely unnecessary remix at the end of the album, but though the track is indeed an uptempo cut that’s easily the most electronic thing on the album, Orton turns it inside out, not only recording a new vocal but rewriting some of the lyrics as well. The original version is the sound of someone lost in a melancholy daydream, but the Then Again Version is almost jubilant, a defiant celebration of transience. “It’s like living in the middle of the ocean / with no future, no past / And everything that’s good right now, well / I don’t wish for it to last,” she sings at the end of the instrumental break, and a moment later, she adds, “I’ll step through brilliant shades, every color you bring / ‘Cause this time, this time, this time / is fine, just as it is.”
Yes, yes it is, even if it doesn’t sound like the single. Trust me, it’s fine — just as it is, and more than fine too.
Release date: March 9, 1999
Label: Arista
Rating: 10/10
13 Comments »
i’m not a big fan of hers…or at least i wasn’t when this album came out. maybe i should give it another listen or something.
Heh…that’s an awfully tepid response. ^_^ I didn’t really expect Beth to make anyone else’s top 10, but I did expect her to be at least slightly more popular around here 
That’s okay. I actually don’t think I’m ever going to get to finish my list, because I’m pretty sure that #6 is going to get me kicked off the site altogether ^^
sam, your #6 cant be any worse than my obsession with joy electric…thats christian synth pop, my friend.
Eh, Joy Electric are only Christian on every other album. Though for the record, I quite like them too, though I think the Echoing Green are slightly better.
Also, for the record, my #6 is WAY more embarassing than that.
hanson?
genesis/phil collins?
pffff, echoing green better than joy electric? no one on this planet, NO ONE, can work an analog synthesizer the way ronnie martin can. the album the white songbook was recorded completely monophonically (no chords were used, just single notes) with an analog synth - and there was no drum machine or percussion, supposedly. the analog made every single sound on the album. i have a thing for analog synths, you see…the echoing green, yes, are very good, but joy e will always have a place in my heart.
I\’m going to go with less embarrassing than Hanson, more embarrassing than Genesis (because everyone in the band went on to have incredibly insipid lite-FM solo careers, I think people forget that there was a time when they were a pretty good band), and….maybe about as embarrassing as Phil Collins, but in a very different way.
I\’m going to keep talking about it like this but avoid giving any real clues as a clever way to drum up reader interest.
And Amber, I would never dispute Ronnie Martin\’s mastery of the analog synths. If that were the only criterion, he\’d win hands down. I just like the EG\’s songs better — though as I said, I\’m pretty high on both bands.
hahaha, i know sam, i just look for every opportunity to wax lyrical about joy e….because i am….a….huge….nerd.
For some reason I don’t own this album. This year’s Comfort of Strangers is the first album I’ve owned of hers and it’ll be in my top 20 0f 2006, with Conceived being a top 10 song. I’ll have to check this out soon.
Also, nice you attacked Clear Channel!
I’m glad someone else liked Comfort of Strangers as much as I did! I sent Christine my year-end list last week, and that album figured prominently on it.
i sent christine my best of 2006 list too. and “comfort” wasn’t on it. and neither was kylie minogue.
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Comment by joiezabel — December 5, 2006 @ 11:08 am
hmmm, that was a good album and all, but i’d never give it 10 out of 10. i guess this is why this is sam’s top 10 fave list, not joie’s.