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Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

Beth Gibbons has always sung the blues. This remains evident on the Portishead vocalist’s tellingly titled new solo album, ‘Lives Outgrown’. Recorded over the last decade with former Talk Talk drummer Lee Harris and Arctic Monkeys producer James Ford, thirty years after Gibbons’ emotive voice was first laid bare on Portishead’s era defining ‘Dummy’ album, ‘Lives Outgrown’ sees Gibbons taking stock of motherhood, menopause and mortality.

 ‘People started dying,’ Gibbons is quoted as saying in the album’s press release. ‘When you’re young, you never know the endings, you don’t know how it’s going to pan out. You think: we’re going to get beyond this. It’s going to get better. Some endings are hard to digest.’

 

Since Gibbons and Portishead co-conspirator Geoff Barrow took the leap from dole queue Enterprise Allowance scheme to winning the Mercury Music Prize, two other Portishead studio albums have seen the light of day. The most recent, ‘Third’, appeared in 2008.

 

Gibbons collaborated with Rustin’ Man in 2002 on ‘Out of Season’, and in 2019 her 2014 performance with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra on an interpretation of Henryk Gorecki’s `Symphony Number 3 became a best seller. In 2021, Portishead’s mournful take on Abba’s ‘SOS’ for Ben Wheatley’s 2016 big screen adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel, High Rise, was released online in support of mental health charity, MIND.

 

‘Lives Outgrown’ is a deeply personal record that suggests it is a release in more ways than one. ‘Now I’ve come out of the end’ Gibbons says, ‘I just think, you’ve got to be brave.’

 

Lives Outgrown is released on 17th May. Beth Gibbons plays the Usher Hall, Edinburgh on 11thJune


The List, June 2024

 

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