“Lives Outgrown” – Beth Gibbons

Album: Lives Outgrown

Artist: Beth Gibbons

Year: 2024

Genre: Psychedelic Folk

Grade: A-

Nobody really knows if influential English experimental trip-hop band Portishead will ever release another album, including lead singer Beth Gibbons. In the meantime, however, she’s kept busy by collaborating with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (lending her ghostly contralto to a 2014 performance of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki) and Kendrick Lamar (she featured on “Mother I Sober” from the rapper’s 2022 LP Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers). Gibbons now returns with her first solo album in over 20 years: an eerie, haunting and cathartic folk collection called Lives Outgrown.

Filled with evocative, Eastern-tinged strings, reverberating percussion that echoes her electronic roots, and slightly sinister murder-ballad melodies that sound centuries old, Lives Outgrown is filled with sonic invention unusual for a contemporary folk album. Of course, Gibbons being Gibbons, always expect the unexpected. The music is indebted to the prog and psychedelic folk of the 1960s and ‘70s, influenced by vanguards like Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tim Buckley and Nico. But like any visionary recluse, Gibbons’ art exists in a time and space all its own.

Her yearning vocals have lost none of their magic, just as provocative now as they were 30 years ago, and her mysterious music possesses the unique power to stand the test of time. It’s the type of album designed to grow in stature as the years go on. As it stands currently, Lives Outgrown is a bold and bizarre and beautiful statement from one of our most underrated songwriters.

NOTES & CHORDS

• Gibbons released a collaborative LP called Out of Season with Talk Talk bassist Paaul Webb in 2002, which makes Lives Outgrown her first “true” solo album.

• Gibbons’ time under Penderecki’s tutelage has certainly influenced her sound. Moments of serene chamber music are turned into trippy tone clusters, most notably on the avant-garde “Beyond the Sun.”

• Fans of Radiohead should enjoy this album, as Johnny Greenwood is also an avowed disciple of Penderecki’s music.

• The quaint choirs on “Floating on a Moment” — and the occasional flutes and recorders that trill throughout the album — are a Sufjan Stevens staple. But I’m glad that, for the most part, Gibbons is more influenced by olde English folk rather than twee indie folk.

• The final song, “Whispering Love,” is a fantastic conclusion, providing a six-minute respite of peace after the uneasy nature that the rest of Lives Outgrown luxuriates in. I applaud Gibbons for adhering to old-school prog values: the best song is the longest one, and it goes at the end of the album.

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