Hi everyone, Bigthony Feelsyano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for a review of this new Beth Gibbons album, Lives Outgrown.

UK vocalist and songwriter Miss Beth Gibbons. Her new one here is one of my most anticipated albums of the year, not simply because the singles in the lead up to this album were pretty fire, but also new music from Beth is just such a rare treat. The group that Beth broke out with years and years and years ago, Portishead was able to make some genre, genre defining music in the lane of trip hop on only a couple of records. Outside of that, extracurriculars for Beth, musically speaking, have been pretty few and far between.

I mean, her Portishead counterpart Geoff Barrow is always prolifically tinkering on something, be that a new Quakers or beak project doing a soundtrack. Meanwhile, Beths last major solo-ish album dropped over 20 years ago, which was a beautiful collab with Talk Talk's Paul Webb under the Rustin Man name. Its also worth mentioning the couple of surprising but impressive guest vocal feature performances Beth has given over the years, like on JJ Doom, the final MF Doom collab before he passed away, or Kendrick Lamar's Mister Morale and the Big Steppers. And now we suddenly have this new full length LP featuring production from versatile studio wizard James Ford as well as Lee Harris of Talk Talk fame. And it's hard to prepare you for what this album has in store because there is just so little to compare it to in Beth's discography.

Sure, I could say the instrumental palettes are similarly dense and a little orchestral in the way that they were on the surprise 2019 live performance that Beth dropped in tandem with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. But I think the similarities kind of end there. The tone of Lives Outgrown is far more forlorn and mournful than anything Beth has done previously. The mood truly is dismal, with a capital D in a way that reminds me frankly of a lot of late-era records from singers and songwriters that have proven track records of writing some pretty dark stuff. Be that Leonard Cohen with you want it darker or some of the stuff PJ Harvey or Nick Cave have put out over the past ten years.

Throughout this album there are themes reflecting on mortality, time passing, the way various aspects of love and life change over time. In a way it kind of makes sense that this record was written and assembled over a period of ten years. Because over this period of time I imagined Beth and many in her life were undergoing some pretty major life changes. The track "Lost Changes" for example, is all about a love that you once knew to be much more intense than it is now. It just sort of progressively growing more and more dull over time, and you so desperately want that to change back. I should also mention the chord changes, the spacey production, the relaxed grooves, the acoustic guitar tones are all very Floydian, and there's an eeriness to the performance and melodies on the track as well, which is not a surprise given that's an itch that Beth has pretty consistently scratched, whether it be Portishead stuff or solo stuff.

As a point of comparison, what's missing now are some the jazzier undertones on Out of Season, which I was referencing earlier, for example, and those have been kind of swapped out instead for rhythm sections and instrumental progressions that are a lot more meditative, entrancing and low key sinister. The song "Rewind" very much fits that bill, with its mystical strings and wailing, crunchy guitars and vocal delays. I can also feel the fear in Beth's voice as she's singing about time passing in such a way to where she can't stop it. It's giving her this sense of dread, and she has gone so far that she can't go back. You can't rewind.

Repetition, instrumental growth along a linear track as well as sonic immersion, I would say these are pretty consistent characteristics across the record, no matter what song you're listening to. But there are some tracks that definitely pop off harder than others, be that through standout choruses, profoundly deep levels of sadness or showy displays of instrumentation, like with the booming drums and huge horn sections firing off throughout much of "Reaching Out," which is really one of the most powerful peaks on the record. Let me also mention "Beyond The Sun," which features these pounding, primal drums across the track, also droning crescendos of strings and leads in these big group "na na na an" chorus vocals, a chaotic sax solo as well. It's a track that is both vibrant but also pretty tortured.

Meanwhile, "Burden Of Life" instrumentally may not be one of the loudest and most aggressive tracks here, but the hook on this one is so shockingly grim, "The burden of life / Just won't leave us alone / And the times never right / When you're trading the sun." The whole track feels like futilely running against a hamster wheel of time. It's a fight you can never win, and these very bold and dissonant walls of strings that hit here and there just up the ante emotionally.

There are other tracks on the record that instrumentally and lyrically are lower intensity, but still are very fantastical. There's "Floating On A Moment" which was a great lead single to the record that has only grown on me with more listens. First off, I love the eerie, long-sustaining vibraphone on this track, which is just gorgeous. But even more beautiful are the whisper-quiet kids chorus vocals on the back end of the song. Which aren't just there in my view, as like a pretty feature, because I do think they add to the narrative of the album and the track, in that there is this changing of time, this loss of generations over years and years and years. It's age contrasted against youth.

There's another interesting juxtaposition on the closing track, "Whispering Love," where Beth's very weary lead vocals make for an interesting fit against these gentle, patient, elegant layers of woodwind and guitar, which sound very honestly youthful and kind of springy, especially with those birds chirping toward the very end of the instrumental. It's very much giving the starting of a new cycle after all of this ponderance of loss of life, loss of color, loss of vibrance and emotion and love. But you have to go through that darkness before you see the light again.

Which is where tracks like "For Sale" come in that has these plucky guitars and weepy in 3/4. The instrumental palate feels like I'm listening to just a very dark folk tune from the eastern block. The song also features these chilling vocal harmonies that raise the emotional impact of the lyrics, which is very much about mirages and dreams in life just not being real or kind of selling people on false hope. The one track on the LP that wasn't really doing all too much for me had to be the opener, which is certainly melancholic and brings a heavy mood to the table. But it's really the only song where melodically the track is kind of meandering and doesn't make a bold statement in any direction.

Outside of being underwhelmed a bit by the first track on the record, I don't really have a lot of criticisms and notes on this album. It's a truly gorgeous, profoundly deep, dark, emotional, high art type of music experience. Very much worth the wait, worth the hype, and just more absolute, undeniable proof of Beth Gibbons emotional perceptiveness, her artistry, and really just everything that has made pretty much every record she has touched over the years, timeless to the 10th degree, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 9 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Beth Gibbons forever.