Beth Orton: Sugaring Season – review

There's a new surety to Orton's voice on this record, her sixth studio album and her first in as many years. Her wisp of a voice has found more weight and with it more feeling; she shapes each phrase with a knowing that's so much more compelling than the restive, anxious strain of some of her earlier records. Steadily paced and coloured with beautifully spare instrumentation, mostly plucked guitar and rippling piano, there's none the less a quiet propulsiveness that tugs through each song, imbuing things with the sense of unseen things stirring.