If we were being honest, very honest, we’d have to agree that even queens of the heartbreak vocal fail to stir the imagination of a record buying public in the same way a pack of salivating youths with switch-guitars and guerrilla marketing scams can. Take those sickeningly vital chart shakers, the Arctic Monkeys; who would you rather have tear open the ring pull on your end-of-term party – Alex Turner and his pals or the gentle, purring melancholy of your Stuart Staples? The incendiary rock of the Ferdinands or the loquacious, lyrical intent of Mr Wainwright? The world of current events is no different; only things that are big, bad and loud hit the headlines – whether it’s the shit that hits the fan in Denmark, or the shit that hits the fan in Westminster, it’s the sound of shit hitting that we’re all really interested in, everything else is just background noise. The downside of this is that we have a life dominated by headlines, but few stories of any worth. Those who have the most to say are often silenced by those who speak or gesticulate the loudest; an especial shame given that folks like Orton, Staples and Wainwright invariably have the greatest of stories to share and the most wonderful of voices by which to share them. Which brings us to ‘Comfort Of Strangers’. Four albums in, two Mercury Music Prize nominations in the bag, and collaborations with a staggering range of A-List characters including William Orbit, the Chemical Brothers, Andrew Weatherall, John Cale, John Martyn, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris and Everything But The Girl and the little girl from Norfolk has failed to make the transition from cult songstress to household name. And mercifully, ‘Comfort Of Strangers’ doesn’t look set to change all that.
Recorded in just 14 days at New York’s Sear Sound Studio with Jim O’Rourke (Gastr Del Sol, Sonic Youth, Wilco) sitting in as producer, ‘Comfort Of Strangers’ offers 14 remarkably intimate and natural performances, pared down and stripped to an almost skeletal degree but divulging the sweetest and often cruellest of secrets. Take ‘Worms’. No more swaddling electronica. No more preening. ‘Worms’ is the sound of a woman without make-up, the sound of a woman who’s lost the will to please, the ‘apple eating heathen’, the ‘rib stealing Eve’ as likely to shag you senseless as cut off your balls with her teeth; not some screaming and neurotic Sylvia Plath-type exactly, more your no-frills Dorothy Perkins, and whilst this vitriol by no means defines the album, it illustrates Orton’s new found sense of purpose and the epiphany she’s clearly experienced. Yes, the dungarees may have been picked out the wardrobe with giddy abandon and the rebellious folk-rising may be a trifle determined at times, but the playful, even coquettish lyrical twists that accompany the delightful ‘Conceived’ remind us that beneath the barbed wit beats a heart of purest fluff.
Muted, confessional, meditative and as rural as a mountain spring, ‘Comfort Of Strangers’ may be Orton’s finest hour, quietly staking her worth, and providing the kind of aching clarity to our lives that headlines seldom challenge. Go placidly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there is in silence. Beautiful.