Daybreak In A Concrete Sky

You might expect Beth Orton to be quiet, withdrawn, maybe even a little spacey in person. Her new album, "Daybreaker," is full of beautiful washes of melancholy, blue vocals and simple lyrics that convey the most abstract of emotions. The electronic effects are subtle and muted. But no. Bounding into a Manhattan juice bar comes a six-foot-tall gal in a bright red vintage sweater, her hair a mess, doing Britney impressions. "I've always been a big fat showoff," says Orton, 31. "I'm not Mrs. Humble Pie. 'Hi! It's Me! Britney Orton!' " She gives a perfect teen-queen head snap.

Orton didn't plan on taking off as a singer-songwriter, let alone becoming a critics' fave. After all, her 1996 debut, "Trailer Park," appealed to an audience that no one knew existed. Her fans were a fusion of rave kid and '60s folk revivalist--they listened both to Prodigy and to Joni Mitchell. "I used to think I was going to be a comedian, but I ended up being this miserablist," says the British-born Orton, smoking a cigarette and slurping an anti-oxidant smoothie. "I feel like I disappoint people when I meet them. I'm cracking jokes, and they're expecting me to be staring bleakly into the distance. My work is really depressing, but I have a laugh in my personal life. I just get the nervous breakdown out in my work."

The new album is heavy enough to be the soundtrack for a wrenching break-up or some other life-changing catastrophe. At the same time, it's pretty enough to shop to. (Her single "Concrete Sky" is already an in-store favorite at the Gap.) Orton's voice is breezy, distant, even hypnotic, but possesses an earthy grit, emitting pain through its frequent cracks. The sweeping music is tweaked ever so slightly--an incongruous beat here; some scratchy, odd sounds there--thanks to the producers, electronica giants William Orbit, Ben Watt and the Chemical Brothers. (Orton's break came when she sang on one of their songs.)

"I scrambled my brain before I made this record," Orton says. "Wait, no--maybe what I did is empty my mind. I didn't write for a while, I didn't touch my guitar. I didn't want to be taking notes. I just wanted to live. What's the point of putting the pause button on life, of stopping during conversation to say, 'Excuse me, just got to jot this down'? F--k that."

Orton is now haranguing people outside the juice bar for a match. "You smoke?" she asks a passerby. "No? Well, do you know any hypnotherapists, then?" Why has such a showoff chosen such subtle music to express herself? She pauses. "I know, it's strange. All these paradoxes--I can't add myself up. Maybe it's one place where I can drop into an ocean of gentleness, compassion or beauty. Life is ugly enough. I'd rather write beautiful music." And have a laugh or two.