SONG: William Blake via Beth Orton

[Ryan Goble]

I've always dug Beth Orton, Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis was on Bob Edwards weekend (NPR) picking his best tracks of the year and tossed this beautiful Beth Orton track "Poison Tree" up from her album Sugaring Season.

Beth Orton first made her mark as an English folkie who blended her songs with electronic beats. Now twenty years on, she’s returned to her folk sources with songs that address the historic concerns of English romantic poetry – the movements of nature and the seasons, the efforts of individuals to discover their place in the natural world, and to reconcile their internal emotions with some kind of external reality. On “Poison Tree” Orton takes an unsettling William Blake poem and crafts a perfect – that is, equally unsettling – musical interpretation of it.

 

Here's a YouTube of the track...

Here is the Wikipedia entry on the William Blake Poem including the full text.

FWIW here is my fav. Beth Orton track is from her 2002 album Daybreaker - it has a great build-up if you listen to the whole thing.

[Mark Smith]

Great stuff, Ryan.  Beth Orton doing Blake - outstanding stuff!  For what it's worth, here's my favorite Beth Orton song:

 

[Ryan Goble]

Glad you dug it - it blew me away as well. Yeah, Daybreaker was really a high watermark, right?