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Album Review
by SaschaS
25-7-2002
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| Beth Orton's daybreaking music |
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Beth Orton: 'Daybreaker'
(Heavenly)
Beth Orton has quietly ascended to a Goddess-dais
While most boys are busy with macho-adolescent-hormonal imbalance that drives them to nu-metal, rap-rock, neo-punk or shlock-ruck, there is a whole different world that is as beautiful as, pardon me for a floral digression, The Wombles’ backyard of Cannizaro Park in spring-bloom, filled with a bird-chorus... Or so claims Johnny Walker who knows history like his carefully unkempt beard in the ZZ Top stylee.
‘Daybreaker’ is one of the year’s finest releases; its wistful lyricism and first-rate musicianship will make this her third (out of three) albums to be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize next week. And it is a disc with some surprising guests, such as country-dame Emmylou Harris; the two met during the America’s Lilith Fair tour of female performers, became fast friends and Harris ended up singing backing vocals on ‘God Song’.
Johnny Marr (of The Smiths) co-wrote the current single, ‘Concrete Sky’, and the rumour is that the two, staying in the same LA hotel, have demo’d seven other songs that might eventually be released. Ryan Adams (goss had him as her boyf but denied) sung back-up on ‘Concrete Sky’ and ‘God Song’ and donated a song, ‘This One’s Gonna Bruise’, that works so perfectly in its acoustic guitar & vocal spartan-like setting.
What takes Orton above a score of singer-songwriters is an inquisitive spirit that prevents her from being tied down to the narrow nature of the genre; she casually sprinkles everything with so many different details, atmos, kinky arrangements… ‘Paris Train’ starts the journey that whizzes you by the Calais refugee camp to land you in a middle of a romantic stroll around Montmartre; ‘Anywhere’ is soulful-but-mellow funker Sade would kill for, the title song is as an offbeat cut that floats and soars as freely as a bird.
Orton’s music feels so intimate that listener has an impression she is sharing a park bench with willows forming a background to compliment this erratic, svelte, sexy (in a marriageable kind of way) artist. Enigmatic sounding with lyrics reading like poetry, this is an exploration into selfness but presented in an oblique, vague and yet so up-close and personal manner. Radiating some disrobing charm that is, without there being an ounce of intended erotism, really sensual, boyo! Beth is equally ethereal and corporeal…
I wouldn’t mind getting up at daybreak to ‘Daybreaker’ if that gets me nearer to…
8.9/10
SaschaS
25-7-2002
Beth Orton’s album ‘Daybreaker’ is released 29 July 2002 on Heavenly
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