Out Of The Darkness
Long-anticipated solo debut from Portishead singer is worth the wait. By Johnnie Johnstone
If the single, Floating On A Moment, finds Gibbons bedevilled by existential doubt, musically it draws its spirit from a holy marriage of late 60s psych-folk (perhaps Jan & Lorraine: those kids’ voices add such gravitas), with the ethereal genius of Il Maestro, all harpsichord and melodies spiralling upwards to the heavens. It’s sublime. On Burden Of Life, Gibbons possibly sounds less agitated (the voice caresses more like, say, Joan Wasser’s) but the dissonant chamber arrangement strikes a decidedly avant-garde chord.
Lost Changes is the kind of song that Nick Cave excels at these days, and is unquestionably one of the album’s highlights, with its stoic pacing and epic string arrangement. A whistling interlude can’t quite quell the gathering storm. By the end, Gibbons’ voice (“Know that I want you to love me/the way that you used to”) is beginning to disintegrate. She’s broken. Gone.
The two songs that follow are clothed in entirely different threads. Rewind bares its claws, with searing guitars buried deep in the mix, and contains a brief percussive meltdown, while the paranoiac, ghostly Reaching Out sounds like PJ Harvey on some really bad amphetamines. Oceans is more expansive but the brushed toms, stark picking and treated background vocals add a sense of understatement with the harpsichord content to creak gently beneath the panoramic sweep. Of course, Gibbons knows precisely when less is more. Allowing the drama and foreboding on For Sale, perhaps the album’s bleakest moment (“smiling with white teeth, the taste of ammonia, the need a delusion, a choice made to fail, ‘cos the dreams are for sale from afar”), to take root. The penultimate track, Beyond The Sun, raises the temperature slightly with its prickly Turkish bazaar rhythm, a free-jazz Fun House blast and an oscillating dronelike finale. It‘s the last bite of winter.
Then, for the first time, a chink of light. Out of hibernation come thrushes and starlings singing their song of spring while a solitary squawk of the fiddle evokes a garden chair swinging on a chain. Whispering Light, the album’s ambrosial finale, promises hope.
The bubble of darkness has burst and suddenly, the world is transformed. It feels like blessed relief.
One suspects Gibbons agonised over every word and note on Lives Outgrown, but the result is an album to fall deeply in love with. If you allow them to, these songs will envelope your soul.