Albums of the Year 2024 - Number 44

Billed as her debut solo album, this feels like a more than worthy follow up to 2002's amazing Out of Season (credited as a collaboration with Rustin Man). Lives Outgrown features production by another Talk Talk alumni, Lee Harris, and contains sonic ghosts of Gibbons' past; some haunting, subtle echoes of the anxious moods explored on Portishead's Third - but there's a general tilt away from the jazz and soul that has previously informed her work in favour of some kind of ancient British folk through a dreamlike prism. 30 years of music and not one single miss. A masterpiece. - Jono, Rough Trade Nottingham | Albums of the Year So Far 2024

Beth Gibbons releases her debut solo album Lives Outgrown. Featuring 10 beautiful new songs recorded over a period of 10 years, the album was produced by James Ford and 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.