"I haven't got any new jokes," Beth Orton announced happily. So, doing her best to entertain her biggest-ever American audience, the English siren told an old one. "Why do penguins walk softly? (beat) Because they can't walk, hardly." Dry English wit might not translate to Americans, but Orton's lush singing came through loud and clear. While most bands limit themselves to a couple of ballads per show to keep from putting anyone to sleep, Orton and her quartet played eleven ballads out of sixteen songs -- and never lost the crowd. That's because Beth Orton doesn't sing for people, she sings to them.

On ballads, she'll gently tease each syllable as it tumbles from her lips, never locking onto a simple rhythm. She can float a lyric in any emotional direction, singing with the ease of someone sitting on her front porch, sighing. On quicker songs, with her band chugging behind her, Orton will adopt a slightly hectoring tone -- on "Stolen Car" she sounded like a sister of Liam Gallagher getting exasperated over "a joke gone too far."

"Stolen Car" is the first single from Orton's new album, Central Reservation, which features two versions of the title track. One is moody and acoustic. The other shimmers and whirs to a quick dance beat. Tellingly, Orton and crew played the acoustic version at Roseland. "Living in the middle of the ocean, no future no past," she sang, "Everything that's good about now might just slide right past." The lyric is about defeating ennui and fully experiencing each moment of life, but in the moment of performance, it was her lovely, full-throated voice that slid right past. Right past the beat, past the band, past that little catch in her throat that she uses to such effect.

At its best, Orton's band complemented her perfectly. On the swaggering "Best Bit," from her 1998 EP of the same name, guitarist Ted Barnes muscled up the distortion on his Stratocaster and Ed Pastorini punched gospelly chords from his electric piano as Orton lamented "the best part of life was a dream." The opposite extreme was "Galaxy of Emptiness," from her debut Trailer Park. For this spacious song, the band didn't groove -- it loomed, Barnes plucking his big-bellied bouzouki (looks like a large lute) as Orton begged, "Could you please knock me off my feet for a while?" Occasionally, Pastorini's piano was mixed too loud and sounded clunky, but such moments were overshadowed by brighter ones, such as the ending of "Someone's Daughter."

"Someone's Daughter" was exuberant from the start, but by its end the band had whipped into a jaunty strut. Orton started improvising short "ooh-ooh's" and "yeah-yeah's" and Pastorini threw her lines back at her from his piano. Upping the ante, Orton ad-libbed the first few lines from "Norwegian Wood:" "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me?" she began, the audience singing along. One can hardly blame an English artist touring America for invoking the Beatles, but Beth Orton needn't worry about the past. She's got a rosy future.

RODD McLEOD
(June 7, 1999)