"The Comedown Queen"

The 90's have not been particularly kind to folk music. What with Bob Dylan's health problems, Ani Difranco's bastardization of the genre, Cat Stevens going nuts, and the total apathy towards Peter, Paul and Mary's constant tours; it seems that folk music is dying. America needs something to revive it. Folk music is in desperate need for someone to come along and save it. Basically, folk music needs a new hero. That hero is here and her name is Beth Orton.

Beth is the last person anyone would look to revive American folk music. She's a Brit, she hates coffee, and she is best known for her work with techno music. But as all true heroes do, she turns her negatives into positives. She has taken her knowledge of techno music and applied it to her beloved folk music.

Beth plays classic folk music, coupled with trance beats and trip-hop. On her new album Central Reservation, Beth shows how well these two genres of music relate to each other. Beth hasn't been the first to try to blend folk and techno, but she is the first to truly succeed. I wonder how many of you out there remember a group called Ruby. They were alright, but too pop-ish (which is a bad thing). They did a pop song, then a techno song, but they never were able to combine the two styles like Beth does.

In her songs, Beth weaves the two styles as if they were meant to be together. The best example of this is in her song "Couldn't Cause Me Harm," where she plays a slide guitar over a trippy dance beat, while in the background an electric guitar lays the rhythm and bongos keeps the beat. The song is danceable and chillable at the same time. Beth's lyrics and voice swings circles around the music, causing it to go from sweet to crazy, till it seems like there is no difference between the two.

Beth's music is not the perfect music to listen to at a club, it's the type of music to listen to after the club. She's similar in style and sound to a band I once heard called "Early Sunday Mornings." She plays perfect chill-out music. The club scene in London even gave her a name, "The Comedown Queen" for reason which are obvious once you listen to her.

Beth has been gathering a lot of acclaim lately, and much of it is well deserved. She won two Brit awards and was AOL's artist of the month for the month of February. Both Spin and Rolling Stone gave Central Reservation praises, and I would like to go on record as saying for once, the music critics are correct. Beth Orton is not only where folk music needs go, but where it will.