RISING: Beth Gibbons

Portishead’s Beth Gibbons doesn’t rush. The last time she released anything like a solo album it was over 20 years ago, as Rustin Man with Talk Talk’s Paul Webb. Since then, she’s lent her aching, singular voice to precisely one track with Kendrick Lamar and one track with MF Doom. And, for the last decade or so, she’s tinkered with one gorgeous piece of witchcraft – Lives Outgrown, her 2024 solo debut.

This new music sees the icon conjure a dark canopy of sound. She sings of mortality and love over finger-picked guitars and smouldering percussion. A musical saw cuts through a patch of pastoral folk. Gentle flutes and woodwinds tickle the edges. Violins fiddle and squall. Arabic rhythms encircle. A children’s choir bursts through like a sunlit glade.

Part of RISING.