Review: Portishead's Beth Gibbons makes a powerful, sorrowful return on 'Lives Outgrown'

It’s been 16 years since Beth Gibbons made Portishead’s Third, her last studio album, and a lot has happened since, especially in the last decade as she entered her 50s. “It has been a time of farewells to family, friends and even to who I was before,” Beth said in a statement announcing her debut solo album, coming 11 years after signing a solo deal with Domino. “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.”

Lives Outgrown, Beth’s first record solely under her own name, puts all those ruminations on aging and mortality front and center. Her lyrics and delivery have always been stained with anguish but even those who don’t usually pay much attention to the words will be hard pressed to miss the messaging: “The loss of faith / Filled with doubt / No relief / Can be found” (“Beyond the Sun”); “Forever ends, you will grow old” (“Lost Changes”); “Now that we have had our fun / Time to recognise the damage done” (“Rewind”); “The burden of life… just won’t leave us alone” (“The Burden of Life”). Lives Outgrown is heavy and you feel every gram.

That said, this is also what you want in a Beth Gibbons record, tracing all the way back to “Sour Times” and “Roads.” But this is not Portishead. Beth said she wanted to “draw away from breakbeats and snares,” and working with producer James Ford and longtime collaborator Lee Harris of Talk Talk, she has made a record of autumnal chill and color, the sounds of the last leaves falling off the trees as rendered in exquisite beauty and earth tones. It is closest, sonically, to Out of Season, her 2002 collaborative album with Rustin Man, but it’s more expansive than that record, full of unexpected touches including a few things that are tough to pull off. For example: “Floating on a Moment,” the album’s first single, features an extended refrain with a children’s chorus who sing, “All going to nowhere.” It shouldn’t work — I can count on one hand the good rock/pop songs with children singing on them — but against dulcimers, flutes and other baroque instrumentation, it’s beautiful and downright chilling.

One thing that hasn’t changed since Third is Gibbons’ voice, which still has the power to wreck you with a single phrase and her facile delivery electrifies every song, every lyric. Beth can also do as much with an “ooh” as a perfectly worded couplet, as “Burden of Life” proves as strings and timpani underscore the emotions. The album’s entire production, from the melodies to the arrangements, all feel custom-built for Gibbons’ voice, even on the more esoteric songs like “Rewind” and “Reaching Out” which both pull from from Eastern influences and are arguably the closest things to Portishead territory found here.

For all the dwelling on death and pain, Lives Outgrown never wallows, and a few songs offer a sense of hope and metamorphosis. “Now I’ve come out of the other end, I just think, you’ve got to be brave,” she says.  Or, as she sings on “Floating on a Moment,” with those kids behind her, “all we have is here and now.” Don’t look back, appreciate all that’s in front of you today.

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