MOJO

First 'solo' album from Portishead's singer, in collaboration with Paul Webb, formerly of Talk Talk, with additional input from Portishead
colleague, Adrian Utley.

"God knows how I adore life..." *Out Of Season* has one of the most arresting opening tracks I've ever heard. Mysteries is a shivery folk ballad, pregnant with the past, sung in something like the voice Marianne Faithfull chose for As Tears Go By. Accompaniment is a single acoustic guitar - recorded, by the sound of it, outdoors, in the rain - and a small heavenly host, the kind of background voices favoured in 1930s Hollywood scores. Towards the end there's a smudge of very quiet electric guitar. Not much going on, then, and what there is is curiously old-fashioned, yet Mysteries is thrilling in its reliance on so little for its power. It is intimate, human, bewitching and duct-pricklingly beautiful.

Everyone I've played it to has fallen into a reverie for four and a half minutes and ended it with a quiet 'wow' or 'Jesus' or 'ffffffff'.

It reminds them of something. "The first time I saw The Wicker Man," said one, cryptically. "[An ex-lover]," said another, wistfully. "The reason I got into music," said a third, crucially. This same person has also expressed an unreasonable loathing for the glassy purity of Eva Cassidy. "Everyone's indulging themselves in her tragedy. It's insert-emotion-here music." We argue about this. Isn't all singing asking us to respond with our own experience, to, in effect, 'insert-emotion-here'? Doesn't a good voice impel you to revisit feelings? Isn't 'the reason I got into music' because it moved you? "Yes, and Eva leaves me cold."

Lots of questions about our response to voices arise listening to *Out Of Season* because Beth Gibbons - unusually, daringly - adopts so many different voices. Generally, we mistrust singers who veer from their 'natural' tone. The deal implicit with a singer like Cassidy is 'Here's my voice and I'm going to filter these songs through it.' Beth's instinct would seem to be different. She treats each song as a new role, electing to convey distinct emotions by changing narrator. For Tom The Model, she becomes Ms. Bryan Ferry; for Show she wears a husky, trumpety vibrato akin to Chet Baker, for Romance she settles on the Bille Holiday tone that was a trademark of Portishead, for Spyder she chooses a west-country whisper. Resolve, simply Beth and her acoustic guitar, begins with a tentative croak that sounds like the mike's at her temple and is catching her thinking of the song for the first time. Such shape-shifting could be the sign of some insecurity, but Beth's a natural-born actress, a medium, and whatever tone she adopts seems totally right. There are several over-praised singer-songwriter types who will be eating their hearts out when they hear this. I can't think of a better singer in Britain right now.

It's a delight to hear her outside the comparatively chilly climate of Portishead too. The music is exquisitely recorded and appealingly
analogue-sounding, Paul Webb and Adrian Utley's productions lay down folk or jazz textures and decorate them with finely-judged details - a clattering Wurlitzer, a harmonica, churchy Hammond, subtle orchestrations. The rooms are audible; and there's something stagey about the sound too, respectful backgrounds for Beth's quietly bravura performances.

This is a record made by people with innately high standards. *Out Of Season* exhibits a generous amount of effortless-sounding craft. The songs are original yet unflashy compositions; one or two are so good they sound like freshly minted old standards. It isn't the product of some luddite hankering for the past, but confidently displays a depth that many modern records don't have the time, wit or inclination to explore. It's among the best albums ever made. It'll remind you of something.

Jim Irvin