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Beth Orton
Comfort of Strangers
(Capitol/EMI)
It's now been a decade since beautifully raspy-voiced Beth Orton first turned heads via her work with The Chemical Brothers, a decade during which Orton has released a handful of fine albums and EPs, evolved from triphop to folk to pop to jazz to any combination thereof, and made the airwaves safe for wannabes such as Dido.
We'll forgive her that last dubious accomplishment, particularly as, with Comfort of Strangers, Orton has finally amalgamated her many influences into a seamless whole, rather than an album of brilliant spurts.
That Orton, under the guidance of producer Jim O'Rourke, has found new confidence is evident from the CD's first notes -- we don't, after all, expect the melancholy siren to greet us with a one-liner like, "Worms don't dance/ They haven't got the balls."
Yet, true to form, Orton makes it clear that the worms infecting her soul are all too human. And pure pop songs like Heartlandtruckstop, gut-wrenching ballads like the title track and even a bona fide rocker in the form of Shopping Trolley, Orton fights her internal and external parasites in the most melodic way, ultimately leaving us with a meditation on the fleeting nature of life itself.
Fleeting, yes. But beautiful.
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Track Listing:
1. Worms
2. Countenance
3. Heartland Truckstop
4. Rectify
5. Comfort Of Strangers
6. Shadow Of A Doubt
7. Conceived
8. Absinthe
9. A Place Aside
10. Safe In Your Arms
11. Shopping Trolley
12. Feral Children
13. Heart Of Soul
14. Pieces Of Sky