Rossato, Micaela
Beth Orton
Issue #27
Following her last album, Daybreaker, the singer-songwriter is inspired by the comfort of strangers
By Katie Hasty
Published: March 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
Beth Orton has been sitting in the lounge of a Manhattan hotel, interviewing since early morning about how the difficulty of the past three years has inspired her new album, Comfort of Strangers. By evening, she has slipped off her shoes, her 6-foot frame folded in a ball beneath her in a puffy chair. Orton bites at the tips of her fingers and touches her face and arms when she is at a loss for words. Her eyes are often averted to the side, or down, or up, or nowhere in particular.
Though Orton doesn’t indicate exactly what has been grueling about the time that followed her previous release, 2002’s Daybreaker, she says she’s had a lot to think about. “I find that I’m always surrounded by strangers, these really intense, impromptu friendships. It’s a strange reality,” Orton says. “There’s the war, all these natural disasters, really horrific stuff going on, and here’s all these people around the world reaching out to help, in Pakistan, on TV… this generosity.”
The human instinct to give to others in times of need conceptualizes many songs on Comfort of Strangers. The album’s title track, which was partly inspired by Ian McEwan’s children’s book Rose Blanche contains the same je ne sais quoi of such consolation. On the song, she sings, “I know the sun that shines on me / On better times than you or I may ever be / I know there’s an answer to the question but I’m not sure that I should word it right.”
While her muses and motivations for the very intimate Comfort of Strangers remains somewhat of a mystery, Orton’s vulnerability comes only as a consequence of her stream of consciousness, not of the need to appease her audience.
“With [Daybreaker], I thought I was being honest with everybody. But I wasn’t being honest. Now that it’s long gone, I see a lot of dilutions in that record,” she says. “At that time, I was more conscious of what I was doing, what I wrote and everything. Before even that, I wrote songs with a sense that nobody else would ever hear them. It’s different now in that, while I know other people will hear them, I just don’t fucking care.”
On her last album, the Brit used some songs to address the her mother’s death. Those songs, much like the ones on Comfort of Strangers, were not only coping mechanisms but helped resolve some of her mixed emotions. “It’s like I’m walking in with a problem and I write until I have a solution and can walk out,” Orton says.
On hand to help put her words to music was acclaimed musician and producer Jim O’Rourke, best known as the guitarist-bassist for Sonic Youth and the engineer and mixer of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. O’Rourke and Orton first met less than 10 years ago, while Orton was promoting her first album, Trailer Park. It would be years before they would meet again, but Orton thinks the creative connection the two made was essential. When they finally reconvened, O’Rourke was adamant about recording and producing with her, if just for kicks. “’Give me five days,’ he told me, just as an experiment,” Orton says.
In less than two weeks, Orton and O’Rourke finished recording what would become the new album, and Orton was pleased about the elements he brought into the process.
“Jim brings a different perspective, a sort of energy. He adds enough and doesn’t subtract too much. He brings about a fuck-offness in the music,” Orton says. “And he is sick of people thinking he’s just about noise.”
The combination of Orton’s thick melodies and O’Rourke’s hands-on-hands-off approach to production makes Comfort of Strangers organic and complete. Gone are Orton’s trip-hopped and electronica days; instead, she concentrates on the acoustic sounds of the piano and guitar, with the added wizardry from O’Rourke on bass and some piano and marimba as well as the heady percussive contributions of veteran drummer Tim Barnes.
Most songs stay in the mid-tempo range with outliers like “Shadow of a Doubt” picking up the pace. The title track, co-written by O’Rourke and new-folk hero M. Ward, is sentimental and raw. Slow-burning “Heart of Soul” stretches Orton’s range as a singer, demanding holding patterns and rock-tinged soul singing. “A Place Inside” reminds her subject that “There will always be a place inside for you” though the opening track, “Worms,” has her singing, “I have waited forever to love someone,” stinging and Fiona-esque in its delivery. “Comfort of Strangers” feels long and covers all its emotional bases, particularly loss and aloneness, saying a lot without divulging too much.
Orton plans a full tour with the album’s February release, with Willy Mason opening several shows. She also hopes to collaborate with O’Rourke and Ward in the future. “I was completely mesmerized watching him,” she says.
“This changed our lives,” she says, referring to O’Rourke and Barnes. “We went into it not knowing anything about each other but we took to each other so easily. I came into it out on my own.”
As for now, the 35-year-old is content to continue her stay in London, sorting through the process and outcome of exposing her grievances and pleasures through her art. “I’d love to move and live in the country, be around nature. It’s so peaceful, I could use that.”
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more