★★★☆
Years after she switched off her synthesizer and found full-time comfort in the arms of a six-string, it’s a unique phenomenon for one to find Beth Orton’s voice in its original habitat following so long in the proverbial wilderness.
Long before she was a folksy troubadour type, Orton made her name by working with the likes of William Orbit and The Chemical Brothers – and, while Kidsticks certainly isn’t entirely a throwback, it’s as close as she’s been in over a decade. The results are a blend of hazy trip-outs and hard-line grooves that cohesively intertwine atop beds of keyboard bleeps and bass whirr.
The twirling indie-pop of ‘Moon’ sees Orton, fittingly, run rings around artists half her age attempting to do the same thing, while the lite-psych of ‘Wave’ lets the strange bedfellows that are ’80s synth tone and jazzy polyrhythm tussle about until they’ve come to an agreement.
It’s not a painless transition – some tracks linger slightly too long in feedback loops, while the inconsequential title track could have been discarded entirely.
Still, it’s a refreshing and surprising album from an artist who could have easily spent the rest of her career safely doing exactly the opposite.
