THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Beth Gibbons’ debut solo album Lives Outgrown features 10 beautiful new tracks recorded over a period of 10 years. It was produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode) and Gibbons, with additional production by Lee Harris (Talk Talk).
Lives Outgrown is, by some measure, Beth’s most personal work to date, the result of a period of sustained reflection and change — “lots of goodbyes,” in Beth’s words. Farewells to family, to friends, even to her former self. These are songs from the mid-course of life, when looking ahead no longer yields what it used to, and looking back has a sudden, sharper focus. “I realised what life was like with no hope,” says Beth. “And that was a sadness I’d never felt. Before, I had the ability to change my future, but when you’re up against your body, you can’t make it do something it doesn’t want to do.”
Songs also touch on motherhood, anxiety and the menopause (which Beth describes variously as “a massive audit” and “a massive comedown” which “cuts you at the knees”) as well as, inevitably, mortality. “People started dying,” says Beth. “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.”
But emerging from this decade of change and realignment has left Beth with what feels like a renewed purpose. “Now I’ve come out of the other end, I just think, you’ve got to be brave,” she says.
The video for first single Floating On A Moment was directed by acclaimed multi-media artist and director Tony Oursler (the man responsible for David Bowie’s Where Are We Now? video). “When I first heard Floating On A Moment, it literally transported me from place to place, filling me with kaleidoscopic emotions and visions,” says Oursler. “If possible, I wanted to capture that psychic liquid in this video. Beth’s work is so powerful it can lead us through life’s forests and fires, revealing glimpses of possible futures. With a voice and music like that I knew we had to make images which are open, somehow speculative.”
In addition to Beth’s work with Portishead, her Out Of Season album with Rustin Man (2002) and the recording of her performance of Górecki’s Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs (2014), she has most recently been heard collaborating with Kendrick Lamar on 2022’s Mother I Sober from his Mr Morale & the Big Steppers album.”
