Trailer Park

1	She Cries Your Name 4:46
2	Tangent 7:28
3	Don't Need a Reason 5:04
4	Live as You Dream 2:59
5	Sugar Boy 4:21
6	Touch Me with Your Love 7:27
7	Whenever 3:53
8	How Far 4:27
9	Someone's Daughter 4:16
10	I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine 4:42
11	Galaxy of Emptiness 10:11

Barnes & Noble

Although she's a woman with a guitar and a passel of affecting songs, it's wrong to call English singer-songwriter Beth Orton a folkie. In fact, Orton first gained notice via her collaborations with such electronica artists as Red Snapper, William Orbit, and the Chemical Brothers, and her 1996 debut album, Trailer Park, features spare backing that varies from light trip-hop soundscapes to ethereal art pop. But no matter how you categorize her, Orton's voice and songs win on their own terms. Her singing carries a world-weary lilt not unlike that of English folk matron Linda Thompson; her lyrics are plaintive ruminations about loss and longing. On "Live As You Dream," a song in which she off-quotes Joseph Conrad by way of Gang of Four, she cynically snaps at her lover with subtle barbs like, "If you've taken me for someone who cares/There's a dream that we both have shared." In "She Cries Your Name," she cribs a melodic motif from "Stairway to Heaven" and weds it to a gorgeous folk epic. In an age chock-full of hipster waifs and Lilith maidens in waiting, Orton is a distinct voice and a powerful talent. Martin Johnson

All Music Guide

A folkie for the electronica age, Beth Orton brilliantly bridges the gap between acoustic songcraft and digital dance beats with her extraordinary debut album, Trailer Park. Fusing the plaintive emotional power of the singer/songwriter tradition with the distanced cool of trip-hop rhythms, Orton creates a fresh, distinct, and surprisingly organic sound without obvious precedent; blessed with a warm, ethereal voice capable of adapting comfortably to Spartan folk ("Whenever," a touching cover of the Spector/Greenwich/Barry-penned "I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine"), buoyant pop ("Live As We Dream," "How Far"), and spacy, densely layered electronica ("Tangent," "Touch Me With Your Love"), she shifts gears with remarkable ease, the depth and clarity of her unique perspective connecting even the most disparate tracks together into a unified whole. Simply put, Trailer Park is one of the most promising and innovative debuts of its era. Jason Ankeny