After spending many years bringing a soulful, spectral presence to Portishead data, Beth Gibbons’ voice has now haunted the Tiny Desk. Gibbons and her band lately carried out a Tiny Desk Live performance, offering an intimate glimpse of her unmistakable voice on the NPR workplace in Washington, DC.
Gibbons carried out 4 songs: “Tell Me Who You Are Today,” “Floating on a Moment,” “Lost Changes,” and “Mysteries.” She was backed by a seven-member band together with guitarist Eoin Rooney, pianist Jason Hazeley, bassist Tom Herbert, violinist Emma Smith, drummer Sophie Hastings, and multi-instrumentalists Richard Jones and Howard Jacobs. “In a way, these versions feel like homemade experiments knit together by trusted comrades,” enthused NPR’s Lars Gotrich. “The arrangements still creak with awe and wonder, but the empyrean textures become more grounded.”
Gibbons is on the highway selling Lives Outgrown, her official solo debut album launched final yr. The broadly acclaimed LP was nominated for the Mercury Prize, awarded yearly to the most effective album out of the UK or Eire, and named the most effective album of 2024 by Time Journal and The Boston Globe. Lives Outgrown additionally earned year-end honors from shops together with Paste, Flood, Treble, Uncut, MOJO, Crack, and The New York Occasions, which raved, “Her new songs take a long view: pondering lifetimes and generations, connecting personal concerns to planetary ones.”
NPR, which opted to carry Gibbons in for a session, additionally had excessive reward for Lives Outgrown final yr, noting, “It is surprising, reassuring, inspiring even how lyrically familiar Lives Outgrown seems, the testament of an uncanny singer simply making it through each day. It feels as if she’s invited us over to sit a spell.”
Earlier than Lives Outgrown, Gibbons was world-renowned for her work with Portishead. The band’s three studio albums—1994’s Dummy, 1997’s Portishead, and 2008’s Third—comprise one of the universally lauded and influential discographies for any trendy band. She additionally teamed with Rustin Man for 2002’s Out of Season and the Polish Nationwide Radio Symphony Orchestra on a efficiency of Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, for which she sang in Polish.
Purchase Beth Gibbons music on vinyl now.
