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Beth Orton has largely eschewed the spotlight during the
four years since her last album, Daybreaker,
making it all the more surprising that she spent just two weeks recording the
follow-up, the startlingly minimalist Comfort of Strangers. It’s an uncanny move, with producer Jim O’Rourke
stripping down Orton’s sound to its barest essentials, replacing her synthetic
beats with quiet acoustic guitars and somber pianos, and it works, sort of.
Orton’s soulful wail is more than capable of carrying an entire album, as was
made evident by 1999’s Central Reservation, and Strangers achieves
an unmistakable poignancy at times, particularly on the title track and the
politically charged “Feral Children.” Elsewhere, things tend to drag. Too often
bereft of fleshed-out melodies and invigorating arrangements, it sounds like a blueprint for an album – a promising
start, to be sure, but nothing
more.
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