Beth Orton live!

Beth Orton
Vic Theatre, Chicago
Monday, April 3, 2006

Like she told us in our April feature, Beth Orton has been revitalized by her latest album, Comfort Of Strangers. While it did yield her best album since her debut, it also skewed her vision at the Vic on Monday and presumably on this tour. Somehow she thought she could teach the audience to forget the past.

It isn’t rare for an artist to push a new album in concert like it’s the most important thing ever, though it is strange for someone like Orton — whose public presence in the U.S. is limited to a thimble of radioplay — to brush her older songs aside so brazenly. It wasn’t that she stripped “Stolen Car” but passed on “She Cries Your Name.” Following some crude remark that she’s “not Grace Slick, I don’t la-ti-da,” she took requests but avoided the most pronounced one, “Concrete Sky.”

What Orton did do was play Comfort Of Strangers, all 14 tracks of it, and sprinkle in by-the-ways of “Central Reservation,” “Someone’s Daughter,” “Sugar Boy,” “God Song,” “Feel To Believe,” and “Pass In Time.” Naturally it resulted in a stilted performance keeping the audience at bay, in a constant state of anticipation without reward.

It was a gutsy move by Orton, who showed considerable guts recording Strangers by getting out of the coffeehouse comfort zone into which she cornered herself, and the pride she has for the title track, “Conceived,” and “Shopping Trolley” is admirable. But she had to have guessed it would numb at least some fans as they folded their hands, ever whitening their clenched knuckles.

If anything it was a valuable litmus test and opening with “Absinthe,” “Rectify,” and “Heartland Truckstop” must have proved Dylanesque/half-baked melodies aren’t her forte. Given the adventurous setlist, Orton behaved somewhat predictably by shooing the band for solo/acoustic mini sets and underusing guitarist Emmett Kelly by keeping his hands unoccupied at length. Likewise, ex-Wilco man Leroy Bach played bass dutifully if with constraints, and drummer Matthew Johnson might consider a title change to “brusher” if that didn’t sound so daft.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly