After spending decades bringing a soulful, spectral presence to Portishead records, Beth Gibbons’ voice has now haunted the Tiny Desk. Gibbons and her band recently performed a Tiny Desk Concert, providing an intimate glimpse of her unmistakable voice at the NPR office in Washington, DC.
Gibbons performed four songs: “Tell Me Who You Are Today,” “Floating on a Moment,” “Lost Changes,” and “Mysteries.” She was backed by a seven-member band including 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 road promoting Lives Outgrown, her official solo debut album released last year. The widely acclaimed LP was nominated for the Mercury Prize, awarded annually to the best album out of the United Kingdom or Ireland, and named the best album of 2024 by Time Magazine and The Boston Globe. Lives Outgrown also earned year-end honors from outlets including Paste, Flood, Treble, Uncut, MOJO, Crack, and The New York Times, which raved, “Her new songs take a long view: pondering lifetimes and generations, connecting personal concerns to planetary ones.”
NPR, which opted to bring Gibbons in for a session, also had high praise for Lives Outgrown last year, 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.”
Before 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 most universally lauded and influential discographies for any modern band. She also teamed with Rustin Man for 2002’s Out of Season and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra on a performance of Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, for which she sang in Polish.
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