UNCUT

One-off collaboration between Portishead vocalist and ex-Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb. Four years after it was last heard on record, it's a shock to hear Gibbons' voice so naked and intimate. This album is largely acoustic and restrained. Gibbons uses these open vistas to muse upon isolation and mortality. Only the R&B of "Tom The Model" raises the volume; otherwise she explores folk and orchestral balladry. But really the music is a different shade of Portishead, Webb ever ready with unexpected sonorities to derail our expectations. The confessional of "Snow" is worthy to stand beside the Joni Mitchell of *Blue*. Quietly devastating.