Beth Orton: Comfort of Strangers (EMI)

HAS EMPTY become the new full? Every month we read of another singer-songstress who's stripped down her sound, kept things "spare and minimal". Now it's Beth Orton's turn, Beth the ragdoll lad-ess who was briefly poster girl for '90s folktronica but who's now "pared down" her sound with aid of revered American Jim O'Rourke, sometime producer of Smog and Wilco.