Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

Year	Album	Artist	Stars	Score	Genre
2024	Lives Outgrown	Beth Gibbons	★★★★½	93	Rock	Chamber Pop	Singer-songwriter

Lives Outgrown is the first true solo record by legendary Portishead vocalist Beth Gibbons, and her first substantial release of music since the trip-hop band’s 2008 record, Third.

In comparison to Portishead’s iconic percussive, industrial, and electronic production, Gibbons here accompanies her lyrics with gentler compositions involving soft guitars, pianos, and swelling chamber instrumentation. These arrangements are reminiscent of a Jonny Greenwood orchestration or a Radiohead backing track circa Amnesiac or A Moon Shaped Pool.

What she does borrow from Portishead, however, are eerie atmospheric elements, occasional muddy horn mixes, and introspective lyrics about isolation and longing. Her themes of the passing of time, aging, grief, and approaching mortality are expected and welcome for an artist approaching her 60s who is writing music for the first time in more than 15 years. These themes are well-explored, and Gibbons’ still incredible and captivating vocals deliver lines with an outpouring of emotion.

On first listen, it takes a little while for the album to wake up because there is a lack of percussion or momentum, but once you orient yourself to navigate some of the dreamlike landscapes, every track becomes a gorgeous setting. Even though it’s a reflective and serious record, there’s hidden warmth and life throughout the album, especially in the orchestrations. “Floating In A Moments” is an early standout.

The middle part of the album has the most energy in a traditional sense. “Reaching Out” features the record’s only driving rhythm section (which I think is achieved mostly by mixing pizzicato strings and percussive hits of the bow and fingers on the body of the violin). These, combined with some dark, deep strings, create a foundation for sad upper-octave violin melodies, distant pianos, and splatting brass hits. The preceding song, “Rewind,” is another more aggressive track and is just as stellar. It isn’t as quick-tempoed but features epic, desert-like strings and North-African wind and percussion instrumentation, with some nasty, mucky backing guitars layered in.

Even if those two tracks are probably my favorites, energy and noise aren’t the point of this album. It’s the themes, delivery, and beauty found on songs like “Lost Changes,” “Beyond the Sun,” and “Whispering Love.”

Lives Outgrown is a great album. The only lingering question for me is whether it surpasses Portishead’s debut, Dummy, and deserves a higher score. Dummy is a vastly influential record in the alternative music and hip-hop worlds, with great tracks like “Glory Box,” “Sour Times,” and “Roads” that have stood the test of time over 30 years. While I doubt that people in 30 years will look back at Lives Outgrown as Gibbons’ crowning achievement (though it’s getting acclaim by critics, it may go unnoticed by most casual or newer music fans), composition-wise, it’s a more complete and emotionally rewarding album that deserves to be celebrated.