Beth Gibbons Will Break Your Heart With ‘Lost Changes’
With a dour acoustic guitar line that recalls David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and, of course, Portishead, Beth Gibbons assumes full doomsayer mode to remind you, “Forever ends, you will grow old,” on “Lost Changes.” The single is the last to arrive ahead of the Portishead frontwoman’s solo debut, Lives Outgrown, which comes out Friday.
Fortuitously for everyone who listens, Gibbons already warned us the affair would be bleak, since she made the album as she came to terms with the deaths of close friends and family. “I realized what life was like with no hope,” she said of her frame of mind around making the record. “That was a sadness I’d never felt.” But Gibbons has always dealt in darker hues even before Lives Outgrown. Most everyone who listens is also probably already familiar with Portishead’s whole milieu of sour times and Gibbons’ recordings of composer Henryk Górecki’s heartbreaking Symphony No. 3.
Photographer Juno Calypso made the video for the song, her directorial debut. The clip deals explicitly with nostalgia as scenes of childhood flicker on the TV in the back of a pink-lined limousine and a couple has an argument in front of a subway map.
Gibbons previously released videos for the Lives Outgrown tracks “Floating on a Moment” and “Reaching Out.” The latter video is also available as an “interactive experience.” She made the record with producer James Ford (Depeche Mode, Arctic Monkeys) with additional production by Talk Talk’s Lee Harris.
She will be touring in support of the album this month and next month with dates in the U.K. and continental Europe.