Time seems to have a different meaning for Beth Gibbons than for ordinary mortals, whether musicians or not. It’s been 22 years since »Out Of Season« with Rustin Man and 16 years since the last Portishead album, »Lives Outgrown« is now Gibbons’ first real solo work. The ten songs, which she recorded and produced with James Ford (Simian Mobile Disco) and Lee Harris (Talk Talk), were created over the past ten years. They’re not just »out of season«, they’re »out of time«. These touching, moving songs sound very close and intimate at times, but they also have the cinematic, wide-screen qualities of her former band. However, »Lives Outgrown« has nothing to do with trip-hop at all. Her voice is the only constant: it’s still unique, as melancholic as it is fragile, as expressive as it is changeable. Sometimes she’s backed by plucked folk guitar, and sometimes she’s supported by pompous strings and unusual brass. Gibbons reflects very personally between children’s choir (»Floating On A Moment«) and birdsong (»Whispering Love«) about changes and fears, motherhood and menopause, death and transience. Of course, Beth Gibbons is not completely detached from the concept of time—she just allows so much of it into her musical output that it literally becomes timeless in the end.
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