What makes Beth Orton’s Central Reservation better than the yearning-but-uplifiting Trailer Park isn’t just the fact that the tone is slightly darker. Central Reservation works due to Orton’s focus and commitment to each song, as there isn’t a single vocal performance that doesn’t feel 100% genuine and there isn’t a moment wasted musically. Opening song “Stolen Car”, for example, burns with a nervous energy, Ben Harper’s wild electric guitar texturing giving the song drive and verve, highlighting descriptive lines like “You were sitting / Your fingers like fuses / Your eyes were cinnamon” — simple, sharp, and precise details that set the scene but never tell you directly what to feel. It’s moments like this that make Orton as effective a storyteller as she is, luring you into the nature of the moment instead of telling you the moral of the story.
In typical attention-grabbing fashion, she follows that firestarter of an opener with a lush, romantic, string-drenched number called “Sweetest Decline”, which, according to T. Cole Rachel’s brief-yet-casual liner notes, is a song that Orton considers one of her all-time favorites, decorated with gorgeous jazz piano (courtesy of Dr. John) and a string section that does more than play the same refrain ad nauseum, switching up their playing style at numerous intervals to keep things lively. Although Orton explored some cosmic-jazz textures on Trailer Park, she really refines those instincts into tight, formal structures on Central Reservation, with augmented vibraphone bends in “Couldn’t Cause Me Harm” giving a specific kind of texture without meandering too far off the pasture. It’s so easy for your ears to simply “accept” into the grooves that Orton and collaborator Ted Barnes are able conjure for this album, but only upon close examination do you realize how well-considered their choices are, these detailed chasms of sound giving way to Orton’s immaculate songcraft. From: https://www.popmatters.com/183683-beth-orton-central-reservation-revisited-2495639556.html
