English singer/songwriter Beth Orton shares “Forever Young”, a new preview from her first LP in six years and Partisan Records debut Weather Alive, out September 23rd. “Forever Young” is an engrossing, nearly six-minute cornerstone of Weather Alive with vocals ringing through an old synth played by ambient artist Dustin O’Halloran (A Winged Victory for the Sullen), backing vocals from Grey McMurray, and double bass by Orton’s frequent collaborator, Ali Friend of the London instrumental outfit Red Snapper. 

The video for “Forever Young” was directed by Stephen Ellcock and Jonathan Reid-Edwards, “Beth originally had the idea of looking at women as mystics and witchcraft as a form of spiritual connection rather than evil,” says Ellcock. “Running with this, we wanted to make something that took you on a journey both cosmic and macrocosmic, from outer to inner space and back again. A kaleidoscope of archetypal imagery and shifting perspectives seen through a miraculous scrying glass, it subverts stereotypes whilst celebrating the power of intuition and the persistence of hope and magic in a treacherous universe.”

Fully at the helm of her own work, Orton chose collaborators for Weather Alive including drummer Tom Skinner (Sons Of Kemet, The Smile) and bassist Tom Herbert with whom she trusted to add nuanced emotional color to the music. 

“It’s true that I’ve spent a lifetime handing elements of my work over to men in a room before I’m ready and having them reinterpret my perception, add chords to make something else happen and sometimes in the process take the music to a place I had no intention of going, it’s subtle the ways that could happen but to be able to hold my own intention throughout has been a powerful experience.”

“I wanted to be one of those women who are all sorted and put together some day but at 40, I kept getting messier and things just kept going wrong,” Orton continues. “This record explores all of that. I’m talking about my experiences possibly in a more personal way then I ever have but the important part will be how this music makes other people feel. It’s not a finished masterpiece, it is a collaboration with time, of someone struggling to make sense. And in that struggle, something beautiful got made.”