Comfort of Strangers

by

Beth Orton

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Beth Orton's Central Reservation is one of my most loved and worn-out records, and as an artist I hold her in very high regard. Orton's musical integrity, uniqueness and high songwriting standards seemed to be intact from day one of her career, and her voice has always been unmistakably beautiful. No one sounded like Beth Orton back in the mid 90's and nobody does now.

Having said all that, I thought she might have stalled a bit with her last full-length album - 2002's Daybreaker. Daybreaker wasn't without a good song or two, and was actually a pretty good record by most people's standards, it's just that you come to expect so much more from a songwriter of Beth Orton's class. Pleasingly, four years on, any notions of a slide in quality have been well and truly dispelled by her new effort Comfort Of Strangers.

'Strangers is less immediate than previous releases and more understated musically and melodically, but sure enough, little by little, these songs begin to get under your skin. The electronic touches that adorned her earlier work are now gone in favour of a more organic approach courtesy of sympathetic producer Jim O'Rourke (Wilco). He allows Orton's soulful folk/pop songs room to breathe, and in moving away from technology her new material becomes imbued with a real sense of timelessness.

Lyrically too, she's in top form. Orton has a knack of writing about the important stuff, without being.... well.... all important about it. Like the great writer Raymond Carver, Orton sings about love, life and the nature of humanity by observing the little details, cracks and fissures in daily existence that tend to get passed over for the more obvious moments. A good example of this is the beautiful, autumnal 'Safe In Your Arms' which is located, appropriately, at the heart of the album. It's about the role that fear plays in love, but lyrically, it's all shadows, whispers, and wind rustled trees. As songs go, it's vintage Beth Orton, yet it also reflects her maturation as a songwriter. By some margin, 'Don't Need A Reason' has always been my favourite Beth Orton song, but I might need to rethink that now that the lovely 'Safe In your Arms' is in existence. I can't speak highly enough of this wonderfully moving piece of music. But there's plenty more where that come from.

The unusually jaunty opener 'Worms', which for all money sounds like a Fiona Apple homage, can claim one of the best and quirkiest opening lines to an album in recent memory with "worm's don't dance they haven't got the balls". C'mon, how can you top that? - it's pure poetry. Elsewhere, the pop splendour of 'Conceived' is sure to please both old fans and newcomers alike, and the elaborate, finely rendered melodies of the title track and 'Shadow Of A Doubt' get better and better with each play. Actually, the same is true for the rest of this collection.

Comfort Of Strangers is likely to cement Beth Orton's reputation as one of the finest and most important singer-songwriters of her generation and I think that it's finally safe now for Joni to hand over that baton.

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