"I guess sometimes you need the place where you belong"

So I've been playing a lot on this trivia site (http://www.funtrivia.com/?ref=triviapoet for those of you who missed that posted link on Facebook) and the music categories often talk about how this album or this song in that year, and how 5, 10, 20, 50 or however many round years ago something happened. And some of my favorites never make it on to that list. So I started thinking that it was 10 years ago about this time of year that I fell in love with the album Central Reservation by Beth Orton.

With BMG and no end of used CD stores, and a lack of music stores memberships to give me discounts (which I am in no short supply of these days), I didn't often walk into a store and walk out with a $15 dollar CD. I did the day I heard snippets of this album. I knew her work from her previous album Trailer Park (thanks little sis!) but while some people who shall remain nameless always favored that album, I was completely hooked on this neat little nugget from the jump.

The lead single, Stolen Car, gives this particular post it's title, and will show up again on its own when and if I do some of the list/opinion posts promised in my previous post of all of about 20 minutes ago. But it goes beyond that. Stars All Seem To Weep is a very good song that totally captures a unique reflective electronic pose that I don't hear many other places, Sweetest Decline is a soft melody backed by what I think is her strongest vocal performance on the album, and the title track in both its original and remixed forms nicely finish off the two sides of the record (assuming of course it was an album and not the CD). It's one of those albums you can put on, and despite having clear strong favorites, listen to the whole thing without impatience.

For several years, I was prone to say this was the best album I had heard in the last however many years it had been up to that point. I have heard somewhere between a couple and a few albums in the last 10 years I might definitely say are better than this one, but that's about it. Where I've made mixes for who knows how many people with Stolen Car or Stars All Seem To Weep on it, I don't often make copies of whole albums for people unless they are looking for something specific. If you read this, and you ask, I will happily comply. And I doubt you will regret asking.