Beth Orton: No more reservations

Assured in person and lauded by critics, Beth Orton admits to having been 'crippled by insecurity' in the past. Only now, she tells Fiona Sturges, is she gaining confidence in her playing and songwriting

I can hear Beth Orton long before I can I see her. Above the chatter that wafts out of the Islington gastro-pub where we are due to meet, I can just make out her breathily cracked tones; when she laughs, she emits a noisy gurgling sound like water travelling down a plughole. Orton is no less arresting in the flesh – all cheekbones, see-through skin and giraffe-like limbs. On her records she sounds brittle and sad, but in person she's loudly cheerful and has a gloriously filthy mouth. Dressed in a silver-and-blue sequinned top, she expresses doubt about her choice of outfit. "I wanted to look nice for the pictures but I've just realised that I look like a bloody ice-skater. I guess it's too late to go home and change."

Over the past eight years, the 32-year-old has been quietly carving a reputation as one of the country's most accomplished singer-songwriters. Her 1996 debut album, Trailer Park, the sleepy grooves of which earned her the nickname "the Comedown Queen", sold more than 300,000 copies. Orton also has two Mercury-prize nominations under her belt and won the Brit awards' best British female solo artist award in 2000 on the back of her second release, Central Reservation. And in many ways her latest album, Daybreaker, picks up where Central Reservation left off. Soulful songs about love, loss and loneliness are counterbalanced by rich folk and country instrumentals.

As ever, it's the stripped-down acoustic numbers where Orton really excels and where her extraordinary voice can take centre stage. Orton talks about music with an earnestness and fervour that is rare in these cynical, PR-mediated times. Yet a seam of uncertainty runs through her conversation. It's as if she's so immersed in the process of making music that it's only when she's asked to talk about it that she starts questioning herself and her place in the pantheon of singer-songwriters. A question about whether she feels she has grown in confidence since her first album sparks some prolonged soul-searching.

"Maybe on this record there was a burgeoning confidence," she ponders. "I think I decided I was a singer and a writer of melodies. I don't think my lyrics were all that confident. Or were they? When I was making the record, I was telling myself, 'I am a songwriter, I am a musician and I have a right to be here.' So, if that's confidence... I guess it is. Or maybe it isn't..."

She pauses and looks up as though she has just remembered that I'm there. "As a person I'm really confident, but when it comes to music I feel it's like hallowed ground. Maybe I'm too reverential towards music. It just seems to be beyond my control. Yet I do know that now I have a burning desire to be more honest and to express the inexpressible. Yes, that's what it's about: expressing the inexpressible."

Orton talks repeatedly about having been "crippled by insecurity" throughout her career. Such feelings, she says, were at their most intense after the release of Central Reservation and a rigorous touring schedule that took in Europe and the US. "It was pretty soul-destroying," she remembers. "I had no self-esteem and I lost a lot of my desire to write. It was one of the most uncreative times of my entire life. I felt spiritually flattened." Matters were made considerably worse by the reappearance of Orton's long-standing illness. The singer suffers from Crohn's disease, an abdominal problem that flares up in times of stress.

"I was living my whole life through gritted teeth, and it was making me miserable and irritable. Constant pain makes you irritable. After the tour, I went to Los Angeles and visited a dietician. There I learnt to eat properly and to fill my body with things that are good for me. Now, I have the odd bad day but I haven't been really ill in two years. I've had to make certain compromises and sacrifices to be healthy, but the rewards are huge."

As well as taking her work extremely seriously, Orton is reputed to loathe interviews. "Oh, bugger," she says when I put that to her. "You've found me out. Yes, I do find it quite hard. When people arrive with these huge psychological profiles on me, I get freaked out. I don't analyse myself in that way. I never have. It's like they know me better than I do. I find it embarrassing and awkward and really quite painful."

But aren't her songs just as personal as anything discussed in an interview?

"Yes, but there's a context to it in a song. When you're writing a song, the more personal you are, the more distanced you become. As soon as you write about something, it's no longer personal – it's universal. But when I'm doing interviews, it's all out of my control and things are taken out of context."

It's possible that her discomfort is related to her turbulent childhood, a period to which she alludes only fleetingly. The youngest of three children, Orton was 11 when her father died from a heart attack. Over the next two years she went off the rails, drinking heavily and pilfering from local sweetshops. Her mother eventually moved the family from their native Norfolk to north London and enrolled Beth into Anna Scher's acting school, a training ground for aspiring girl bands and stars of Grange Hill. Then, in 1989, when Beth was 19, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer; she died a week later. After that, Orton took off for Thailand, where she spent three months with a group of Buddhist nuns.

Orton never intended to be a musician – as a child, she was bored by her brothers' band-related anecdotes and her parents' love of the New York Dolls and Southern Death Cult. It wasn't until her early twenties, and a chance encounter with the ambient-dance producer William Orbit at a party, that Orton made her first foray into music. Captivated by her voice, Orbit asked her to sing on a record called "Water on Vine Leaf". Orton's career has since been punctuated by one-off collaborations.

After Orbit's record, her next appearance was as a guest on the Chemical Brothers' debut album, Exit Planet Dust, in 1995, a move that afforded her instant credibility with dance enthusiasts. After the release of Trailer Park, she worked with Dr John, Terry Callier and Ben Harper. For Daybreaker, she has requisitioned the services of Johnny Marr, Emmylou Harris and, most effectively, Ryan Adams, whom she once described as her "imaginary friend come to life".

"When you meet other musicians backstage at festivals, you bond with them," she says. "We so rarely get to meet each other that when you do, you're like, 'Wow, I love what you do,' and before you know it, they're all over your record. I guess it's a bit of a confidence-booster as well. If someone you admire wants to work with you, you feel a bit pleased with yourself."

Orton beams with pride at the memory of meeting Emmylou Harris, with whom she sings on Daybreaker's "God Song" ("He's my man and I done him wrong"). "She came up to me and started making a fuss of me, telling me how much she loved my last record. Just the other night I saw her on telly. The penny finally dropped that this brilliant woman, this legend, sang on my record. How amazing is that?"

The single 'Thinking about Tomorrow' is out on Monday on Heavenly. Beth Orton plays Brighton Dome (01273 709709) tomorrow, Guildhall, Portsmouth (023-9282 4355) on Sunday and the Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 (020-7589 8212) on Monday