Beth Gibbons has announced her long-imminent debut solo album Lives Outgrown with the unveiling of its hallucinatory first single “Floating On A Moment.” The record’s release on May 17th via Domino Recording Co. will also coincide with a string of U.K. and European tour dates this summer.
After three decades as the hauntingly beatific voice behind U.K. trio Portishead, it comes almost as a surprise that Gibbons has yet to release a solo record. But that astonishment lasts only as long as it takes to think of one of her many side projects and collaborations — of which there are so, so many.
From film scores and symphonies to a staggeringly eclectic collection of features, Beth Gibbons has lent her voice to various projects. That includes Out of Season — created alongside Rustin Man — her first full-length work outside Portishead. As well as performances alongside Jonny Greenwood and Bryce Dessner, not to mention a feature on Kendrick Lamar‘s last album.
Now, she’s using her sublimely transfixing and enigmatic vocals to articulate her most personal body of music to date. Recorded over the course of a decade, the album’s introductory single “Floating On A Moment” is a calculated crescendo through life’s midpoint, Gibbons’s voice breaking against the strident strings and ghostly call of a cherubic choir.
Gripped by a sobering proximity to mortality, the song encapsulates a resounding theme of Lives Outgrown. One where lulling tones and spellbinding atmospherics gather like a fine mist around her rhapsodic grappling with the prospect of one’s death. “Without control / I’m heading toward a boundary,” her lucent voice trembling. “That divides us / Reminds us.”
“People started dying,” Gibbons explained. “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.”
The single also comes with a music video directed by Tony Oursler that attempts to render the song’s reckoning with life’s ever-shifting movements between life and death into a visual experience. As Gibbons sings, a warped layer of images is projected and morphed onto her silhouette, encompassing the surreal breadth of life’s capacity to be both beautiful and macabre.
Words: Steven Ward
Lives Outgrown the new album from Beth Gibbons is out on May 17th via Domino Recording Co.
Visit Beth Gibbons on her website and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
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Beth Gibbons tour
5/27: La Salle Pleyel – Paris
5/28: Theater 11 – Zürich
5/30: Primavera Sound Festival – Barcelona
5/31: La Bourse Du Travail – Lyon
6/02: Uber Eats Music Hall – Berlin
6/03: Falkonersalen – Copenhagen
6/05: Tivoli Vredenburg (Main Hall) – Utrecht
6/06: Cirque Royal – Brussels
6/09: The Barbican Centre – London
6/10: Albert Hall – Manchester
6/11: Usher Hall – Edinburgh
Watch the music video for “Floating On A Moment” the new single from Beth Gibbons below!
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