Ten tracks in ten years... but Beth has made a solo album of rugged, rhythmic beauty
Beth Gibbons Lives Outgrown Out now ★★★★★ Paul Weller 66 Out Friday ★★★★☆ Katherine Priddy The Stables, Wavendon Touring until August 31 ★★★★★
Some singers are in our faces all the time, like a boring acquaintance on Instagram. Beth Gibbons is just the opposite. You don’t hear a peep from her for years, and then you find she’s making her solo debut at the age of 59.
Gibbons is still, as far as we know, the frontwoman of Portishead, the Bristol band revered for their trip-hop, if not for their productivity. In 33 years they have made three studio albums.
That should leave a bit of room for side projects. Gibbons embarked on one long ago with Rustin Man (Paul Webb from
Talk Talk). Their album Out Of Season glowed with a gentle intensity and soon became an old friend.
Now, 22 years later, Gibbons delivers a follow-up of sorts. Lives Outgrown took her ten years, one for each track.
It deals with motherhood, mortality and the menopause – from giving birth to facing death, via the toughest patch of turbulence in between.
Music has addressed mortality for centuries, whether directly or otherwise. Since the 1980s it has got better at discussing motherhood. And now at last it is tackling the menopause, which Gibbons describes as ‘a massive comedown… a massive audit’.
Without a lyric sheet you can’t always tell exactly what she’s saying about these life landmarks, but you always know how she’s feeling about them. Her voice could have been custom-built to express pain, with the occasional flicker of joy. The album is worth buying for her singing alone.
She hasn’t lost her ability to pick a good sounding board. Her producer here is James Ford, who has worked with Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys – three acts that couldn’t be less like Gibbons if they tried.
The sound is rhythmic, timeless and woody: it has the timbre of timber. The tunes feel like a tour of beauty of a particular kind, sometimes windswept, sometimes rugged, sometimes radiant.
With the grandeur of Lost Changes, the urgency of Reaching Out and the elegance of Floating On A Moment, Gibbons matches her best work, which is no mean feat.
Her UK tour in June – typically underdone, only three nights – should be riveting.
If it’s productivity you’re after, Paul Weller is your man. After making six studio albums with The Jam and five with The Style Council, he has now totted up 17 on his own. And he has yet to run out of steam.
His new album is called 66, because that’s the age Weller is about to turn. Listening to it, you suspect there’s another reason: the songs feel like tributes to 1966. Not the World Cup win but the music of the moment, which was poised between pop and rock, childlike simplicity and stoned sophistication. These 12 tracks are swinging, stirring and satisfying.
Katherine Priddy is touring to promote The Pendulum Swing, one of the albums of the year so far. Her show is simple but entrancing. She and her two sidemen just stand still and play, and that’s fine because every one of her subtle folk-pop songs contains a line that jumps out and grabs you.