In aspirational Hampstead in north London, Beth Orton says people don’t know what to make of her. “Everyone’s poking you with sticks,” she says. “‘What are you, are you successful? What kind of music do you make, what’s your thing?’ I don’t know, I’m just muddling through. I’m a fucking mess, all right? I’ve become a ‘mother’. I meet my children at the gates of the school. And I don’t know if I am that person, but I’m trying to be. I’m also a singer and a songwriter, and I’ve been famous – did that happen, I’m not sure? Trying to incorporate all those incredibly disparate bits of the self into one is ... I just don’t know any more. I don’t know who the fuck I am.”
Motherhood, waning fame and the strangeness of a new neighbourhood are just some of the challenges Orton has faced on the way to her darkest album to date, Weather Alive, along with grief, multiple chronic illnesses, label rejection and financial instability, all of them creating a centrifuge that flung apart but also concentrated her sense of self.
