Album "Lives Outgrown"

Beth Gibbons: jumping out of the cocoon of suffering

Anything but simple or normal: Portishead legend Beth Gibbons gives free rein to all feelings and experiments on her solo debut.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV,)

Portishead third member Beth Gibbons spent ten years working on her official solo debut "Lives Outgrown". The result is an album full of quirky moments, musical experiments and personal emotional coping mechanisms. Spring has never felt so autumnal.

Live, she likes to stand with her back to the audience, avoiding interviews as much as possible and permanently withdrawing from the public eye. This is how we have come to love and appreciate Beth Gibbons. One of those alternative, pop-cultural superstars for whom the cult of celebrity and the limelight are at least as irritating as emotionless songs. Exactly 30 years ago, Gibbons and her two partners Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow made music history. With their band Portishead, they released their debut album "Dummy", which was to bring the burgeoning trip-hop scene from Bristol to its first and hardly surpassable peak. Massive Attack, Tricky and co. worked their way to the top of the chilled sub-genre with some magnificent songs, but the ingenuity of this record, which was unbeatable in its compactness, remained in unattainable spheres.

Weird projects
Portishead recorded more cult albums, but over the years they lost the desire to make music together. There were no big retirement speeches or clear messages; with a few exceptions, mostly based on charity events, the legendary trio crawled into hibernation eight years ago, which they still do to collectively generate energy. In June 2013, Gibbons first indicated in a statement that he wanted to release a solo album via the gourmet label Domino Records. She had already released a solo album of sorts in 2002 with Talk Talk's Paul Webb aka Rustin Man. "Out Of Season" had nothing to do with Portishead and, with its jazz-folk approach, was more of an homage to Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell or Nick Drake. This was followed by numerous film scores, a wacky version of the ABBA classic "SOS", the orchestral album "Henryk Górecki: Symphony No. 3 (Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs)", curiously sung in Polish, and a surprise appearance in the song "Mother I Sober" by Kendrick Lamar.

The 59-year-old has perfected her role as a quirky aunt in the alternative pop segment over the years. It is therefore hardly surprising that her reputation as the "British Björk" is also reflected on her first real solo album "Lives Outgrown". A full eleven years after the announcement, the work is now actually being released and thwarts any Portishead nostalgia hopes with self-confident compositional chutzpah. Gibbons goes off the beaten track and creates a ten-chapter musical universe that goes against the grain. The songs are overlong and not suitable for streaming. The emotional mood is reminiscent of an emotional onset of winter, while the album now sees the light of day just before the start of summer. Instead of making use of a certain comprehensibility in the songs, at least in the singles, Gibbons takes a running jump into the twisted and wallows in it with glee.

Art out of sadness
It took the artist a good ten years to compile the songs. This is not so much due to the instrumental aspects, but rather to the different, quite dark experiences and adventures that she had to gather as inspiration for the work. It is about many farewells, deaths and radical life changes, as we all have to experience again and again as the wheel of time continues to turn. "I realized what life is like without hope," she is quoted as saying on the album release, "and it was a sadness I had never felt before. I used to have the opportunity to alleviate my future, but when you're fighting your body, you can't force it to do something it doesn't want to do." The songs on "Lives Outgrown" are indeed like a physical experience. You can feel the pain in the folky "Oceans", carry the heaviness of "Burden Of Life" with you and would like to rewind "Rewind" yourself in order to make different or even better decisions.

The lead-heavy songs are about motherhood, various fears and the menopause, which almost brought Gibbons to her knees, especially on a human level. The weight of songs such as the emotional opener "Tell Me Who You Are Today" or the haunting "Reaching Out" seem like a manifesto of despair. A battle cast in sound against the inevitability of ageing, which some find harder to face than others. "These are songs from the middle of life, when looking forward no longer offers as much as it used to, and looking back suddenly becomes sharper." With the end of loved ones and personal phases of life, the feeling of a new beginning arises quite automatically. "You think: We'll get through this. It will get better. Some endings are hard to digest." These are also some of the songs on "Lives Outgrow", which can be described as the sonic counterpart of arbitrariness.

Anything but normal
Gibbons worked with another Talk Talk member this time, namely drummer Lee Harris. However, he didn't just focus on his standardized repertoire, but, on the instructions of the boss, he beat on everything that the immediate surroundings had to offer. Wooden drawers, cardboard boxes, Tupperware or cans filled with peas. A drum set consisting of a box full of curtains and a cowhide water bottle that served as a snare. Producer James Ford, the third member of the creative team, was similarly open-minded and sat down in the (!) piano for the album opener to hit the strings with spoons. Dulcimer, lute and recorders were also allowed and encouraged. The result is perhaps the most mysterious album of the year, but its beauty only shines for those who are patient and can think outside the box. "Lives Outgrown" is a masterpiece of quirky tonality.