Third, the last Portishead album to come out, was nearly a decade and a half ago. It should in turn not come as a surprise that vocalist Beth Gibbons would rest in the dark for nearly three decades to release her own proper debut solo album, seeing that careful creative curation and working on the universe’s timeline seems to be something its members are aligned on. For longtime listeners of the enigmatic experimental alternative purveyors, their inclination for the listen might be hearing a version of Portishead vesseled through the form of Gibbons, but Lives Outgrown is something entirely of her own personal depiction. It’s a collective body of art that took nearly as long (a decade) for Gibbons to bring to life, only to use the moment to look back on all of her years and career from the deathly hollows.

That at least should satisfy the morbid urges of her main band’s listenerbase while introducing them to a side of Gibbons that exists as her. A densely rooted weave of gorgeous gothic folkwork and chamber pop created from acoustic guitars and bass, stringed arrangements of violin and cello, the wind bellow of bass clarinet, harmonium and recorders, piano and spooned percussive, and a bowed saw are some of the tools used to harvest skin, bones and spirit in her sound here, with nary a breakbeat or industrial synthesizer to be heard near its foreground. It feels wholly of the natural world reflective of this human experience as she navigates the passage of time from a place of well-worn wisdom in living it.

One thing time hasn’t weathered, however, is Gibbons’ voice which remains a conduit for spell-binding, as she departs her role as Portishead’s eerie specter and transforms into something more like that fantastical light at the other end as her songs sing of life’s circle from a maternal perspective, the inevitable final chapters, the grief we carry for those who’ve already crossed over, and who we leave behind. For a subject so heavy on the heart, it doesn’t feel that way when Gibbons makes it into music, although the apparition of a children’s choir throughout may serve to spook. Instead, Lives Outgrown is the life’s work of an artist who has chosen to enchant death with a sparkle of her own dark magic rather than let it shake her.

Highlights: “Floating On A Moment”, “Reaching Out”, “For Sale”

Beth Gibbons’ Lives Outgrown is available now on Domino Recording Co.

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