Perspectives: Beth Gibbons

Perspectives: Beth Gibbons

About the show

Beth Gibbons announcing final shows for her Lives Outgrown album.

“Folk, classical and jazz textures back the Portishead singer’s elegant, swooping voice in a solo outing of unapologetic intensity” The Observer

Beth Gibbons announces the final Lives Outgrown dates in 2027 including a summer European tour. 

“These will be the farewell shows for Lives Outgrown…… It’s been great to play with such  amazing musicians/friends and to have such a brilliant team!   Thanks to everyone who’s supported these shows so far’  Beth Gibbons

Beth Gibbons’ debut solo album Lives Outgrown was released on Friday the 17th of May 2024.  Featuring 10 beautiful new tracks recorded over a period of 10 years, the Mercury Music Prize nominated album was produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode) & Beth 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. 

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.  Beth also featured on this year’s HELP 2 compilation album for War Child, which features her stunning cover of The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’.

Presented by NCH

Event type

GigsTrad & FolkClassicalJazz & Blues

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