Beth Orton: Daybreaker : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

British singer-songwriter Beth Orton has one of those voices so hot-wired to her heart that she could jam with Mantovani and the result would still be raw. On Daybreaker, Ben Watt of Everything but the Girl piles on the orchestration, mixes fat stacks of swanky instrumental harmony louder than her voice and studio-polishes the tracks until they sparkle like the tinsel on a tree. But it all still sounds like an Orton album, just as sure as a hangover is gonna give you a headache whether it's Christmas morning or not. No more neo-this or folk-that. Orton delivers some gooey pop complete with sticky tunes and honey-dipped ear candy - yet it's heavy, disturbing, recondite. Whether she's harmonizing with Emmylou Harris on the haunted "God Song" or bouncing on the Chemical Brothers' digitized beats during the doom-y title cut, Orton cries as if someone has left her cake out in the rain.

BARRY WALTERS
(RS # 901 - July 2, 2002)