Daybreaker is the third album by singer-songwriter Beth Orton released in 2002 on Heavenly Records and the Astralwerks Records label. The album reached #40 in US and #8 in UK. Mojo Magazine called the album “her best to date…”. The album earned Orton a nomination at the BRIT Awards for Best British Female Singer as well as Best Album at the Q Awards.
- 180 gram vinyl reissue
Review
“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. To its credit, the record's subtleties blossom over repeated
listens, and moments like “Thinking About Tomorrow” and the haunting
“God's Song” rank with Orton's best, but the album as a whole is so
relentlessly dour and down-tempo that it never quite takes flight – which may
well be the point, but it's not a point well-taken." J Ankeny –
Allmusic.com