Portishead’s Beth Gibbons announces debut solo album a decade in the making

11 years after signing to Domino, Gibbons says new music is coming “very soon.”

February 01, 2024
Portishead’s Beth Gibbons announces debut solo album a decade in the making Beth Gibbons at Latitude Festival 2016. Photo by Dave J Hogan/Getty Images.  

Beth Gibbons, lead singer of the pioneering trip-hop group Portishead, has announced that her first-ever solo album is on the way. Titled Lives Outgrown, the project will finally be the first to come from a deal Gibbons inked with Domino in 2013. According to a note published to her Instagram account, new music is coming “very soon.”

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“It has been a long journey and spans over a decade,” she writes. “As usual it reflects what’s been going on with me internally, my 50’s have brought forward a new yet older horizon. It has been a time of farewells to family, friends and even to who I was before, the lyrics mirroring my anxieties and sleepless nighttime ruminations, hence Lives Outgrown.”

Gibbons’s process for this album changed considerably from that of her previous, collaborative records, “exploring structures within my own personal capabilities,” she explains later in the post. “I wanted to draw away from breakbeats and snares, focusing on the woody fabric of timbres away from the sugary addiction of high frequencies that satisfy like sugar and salt.”

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See the post below via Stereogum.

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In 2022, Gibbons sang on “Mother I Sober,” a track from Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. The feature earned her her first Grammy nomination. And this past August, she joined The Miraculous Love Kids for a combined cover of “Atmosphere” by Joy Division and “Hero” by David Bowie.

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Portishead’s Beth Gibbons announces debut solo album a decade in the making