About

Lives Outgrown, the long-awaited solo debut from Beth Gibbons is a gripping study of ageing and loss. In the Portishead singer’s singular, astonishing soundworld, these songs sit in autumnal gloom but are occasionally dappled with warmth and light. Her solo debut arrives 22 years after her collaboration with Rustin Man, Out of Season, 16 years after the last Portishead album, Third, and 11 after it was first announced.

Lives Outgrown ultimately draws you into a soundworld entirely its own. Strings play mournfully low and squeal discordantly; the snare-free drumming resolves into a Bo Diddley beat on Beyond the Sun, and elsewhere rumbles ominously, like the last sound you’d hear before being ritually sacrificed.

Gibbons’ careworn voice threads through it: intimate, in-your-face and utterly distinctive as ever, singing about ageing and loss. “Come through my heart when you can”, she pleads on Whispering Love, apparently to the ghost of a late friend or relation. The album’s autumnal gloom is affecting and enveloping, although occasionally dappled with warmth and light, as when Lost Changes’ lovely chorus arrives, or a solo violin spirals skywards on For Sale, or a children’s choir appears during Floating on a Moment, albeit singing “we’re all going to nowhere”. A dispatch from the darker moments of middle age, Lives Outgrown is occasionally challenging, frequently beautiful and invariably gripping. — (via The Guardian)

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Label: Domino
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Country: Worldwide
Released: 2024
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Rock, Indie Rock

File under: Alternative / Indie / Pop
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