Album Review - Beth Orton - Comfort of Strangers

By Tracy M. Rogers

Full of pop melodies and tales of lost love, Beth Orton's Comfort of 
Strangers is equally influenced by Joni Mitchell's fetching folk, 
Christine McVie's blues-infused pop, and Dusty Springfield's blue-eyed 
soul. Imbued with sadness and hope, the album finds Orton using 
religious imagery and subtle political rhetoric while spinning a web of 
minimalist musical bliss, and often, she complements her edgy, Cockney 
alto with only acoustic guitar, piano, bass, and percussion.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the opening track Worms. A 
rollicking, piano pop chantey, the song is a tale of tarnished love in 
which Orton goes from being someone's beloved to being a fallen woman. 
"Now, I'm your apple-eating heathen/the original sin/well you ain't got 
my faith/so best keep your belief," she croons in the chorus. Elsewhere, 
she becomes a "rib stealing Eve" -- a clue that the track is as much 
about male chauvinism as it is about a love affair gone wrong.

Comfort of Strangers closes with two quite disparate songs: the funky, 
up-tempo Heart of Soul and the somber, piano ballad Pieces of Sky. The 
former is a plea for more love in the world, while the latter is an 
affirmation that life continues, even in the face of tragedy, because 
death and sorrow are inevitable. "And how do you know how much you'll be 
missed?/Does it add up to some names on a list?/Do you know we're just 
pieces of sky/pieces of sky that keep drifting by?" she asks. For her, 
the answers seem to lie in faith and struggle, in love and life. 
Possessing both pop sheen and musical minimalism, Comfort of Strangers 
is a lyrical journey into Beth Orton's personal landscape -- 
encompassing love and heartbreak, politics and humanity, life and loss.

This is an excerpt.  To read the complete review, please visit:

http://www.musicbox-online.com/reviews-2006/bo-comf.html