Daybreaker
*Daybreaker* finds Orton at a crossroads, marrying her debut\'s folktronica to the Americana of *Central Reservation*. There\'s also a newfound cinematic streak—the stately orchestrations of “Paris Train”—and her diverse array of collaborators speaks to Orton\'s amplified stature. The Smiths\' Johnny Marr co-wrote the languid “Concrete Sky”, while her earliest collaborators, the Chemical Brothers, underwrite the title-track\'s paranoid ambience. Emmylou Harris pops up on Nashville waltz “God Song”, while Ryan Adams is a frequent presence: He lends backing vocals, and wrote the tender and lovely “This One\'s Gonna Bruise” for Orton to sing.
The first thing you notice about Daybreaker, Beth Orton's third in a series of progressively bland and unadventurous releases ...
Largely shorn of the energy and ebullience of the preceding Central Reservation, Beth Orton's third LP cuts a far more somber figure -- Daybreaker sacrifices immediacy for uniformity of mood and emotional tenor, and although it's perhaps her most consistent and mature work to date, it's also her least engaging, never matching the dizzying heights of her previous efforts even as it consciously avoids past pitfalls. The attention to detail and nuance that colors these ten songs is undeniably impressive, but in forgoing the electronic elements of before in favor of more organic adornments like strings and guitar drones, Orton's lost some of her originality and unpredictability -- she's very much a traditional singer/songwriter now, and though much of Daybreaker is jaw-droppingly beautiful and brutally poignant, somehow the word "traditional" seems all wrong for any qualified assessment of Orton's music.