THE GUARDIAN

5 stars

Portishead singer Beth Gibbons' solo debut is in the rarefied company of those records that have a dignity and otherness that sets them apart from the gaudy business of pop music.

Made in collaboration with former Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb (Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley is here, too), it isn't strictly a solo album, but the singer of these delicate, desolate songs is very much alone.

Often the songs are about memory, and the way in which slivers of intense recollected emotion become embedded in the psyche. Somewhere between folk and torch singing, Gibbons finds a series of voices, as if each song is a different character. Romance is smoky Billie Holiday; skin-prickling opener Mysteries is crystalline 1960s folk; Resolve is husky resignation.

Often incredibly sparse, sometimes lush (Tom the Model seems to quote from the heartbreak soul of Nina Simone's Do What You Gotta Do), the mood is desperately intimate, overwhelmingly autumnal. Out of Season is gorgeously uneasy listening.

David Peschek