“The Portishead vocalist/lyricist took a decade to concoct her first-ever solo studio album and came out with bleak, orchestral, funereal songs about motherhood, mortality, and everything caught in-between.”
“A handful of adjectives seem to follow Beth Gibbons around. “Tortured”, “bleak” – they crop up again and again in descriptions of the singer, the combined effect being the construction of a sort of proxy personality to drape over that remarkable voice. The problem is, those imagined traits have been derived solely from the same voice they are seeking to embellish: after all, aside from a couple of”
“Beth Gibbons is like a ghost. Probing the shadowy spaces of bereavement, her songs are articulated through weary quivers, moans and wails. They convey fractured feelings and inhabit dislocation itself, approaching the remaining space as terrain to be mapped, felt through, revisited, grown with. Her voice first materialized thirty years ago within the claustrophobic urban loneliness of Portishead'”
“the Portishead singer’s solo debut elegantly contemplates mortality”
“Thirty years after stepping into the spotlight, the Portishead singer reintroduces herself with her debut solo album. History weighs heavy on her songs, but she takes pains to avoid her musical past.”
“Portishead vocalist’s solo bow is an enthralling study of time and loss”
