Of course you shouldn’t do it. I know that. But because Beth Gibbons and her amazing band’s concert last Wednesday night at Utrecht’s TivoliVredenburg had been so impressive and moving, I just wanted to see her again, and as soon as possible. I had interviews in Manchester and Leeds and was going to be Richard Hawley’s concert at Hammersmith Apollo on Saturday in London anyway, so I decided to stay an extra day and try to catch her. Her concert at the Barbican had sold out quickly. Don’t ask me how, but it worked out… and the concert gripped me just as much as the one in Utrecht last week had.
The Barbican was the ideal place. The sound there is always fantastic and almost every seat gives you an excellent view of everything happening on stage. Gibbons and her band of musicians played, as they did on Wednesday, her recently released first solo album “Lives Outgrown” almost in its entirety, in a slightly different order from on the record, and with a couple of tracks from “Rustin Man” intermingled in the set.
It’s a stunning set of songs, incomparably adventurous, exciting and intriguing. And just like the Wednesday before, Gibbons takes each track to emotional heights with her singing, and has a great instinct for what each of the musicians will need to make every moment in every song count. The record has incredible layering, but the musicians pack even more punch live. And the songs grow even more as they play them with each night. It’s what happens with a group of very classy instrumentalists who also have a genuine feeling and a lot of love for Gibbons’s songs.
Lives Outgrown is a masterpiece and all of the songs are both exciting and emotionally affecting. From the very first notes of “Tell Me Who You Are Today”, the listener is once again fully immersed in the musical framework that Gibbons – with former Talk Talk drummer Lee Harris – set out on the album. With brilliant songs like “Floating on a Moment” (that guitar line building up to the chorus is insane), “Lost Changes”, “Oceans, For Sale” and the rousing “Beyond the Sun”, once again they put down an unparalleled, moving and beautiful set.
And then. when all the tears seem to have been shed on beautiful set-closer “Whispering Love”, in the encore they cap it all with the most beautiful version of Portishead’s “Roads” I have ever heard. Pared down and with no percussion, it gets set in motion with a masterful bass line from Tom Herbert, and after that a keyboard part which is instantly recognisable. Gibbons sings the song to heavenly heights with her so melancholic comforting voice. With “Reaching Out”, the band then turns up the heat for one last time and then it’s over.
Beth Gibbons and her band at The Barbican in London were as peerless and moving as in Utrecht. And going back to my first words: to go and see something that hits so hard again so quickly will usually end in disappointment. Tonight, that was not the case at all. Not at all, in fact. “Lives Outgrown” is an undisputed masterpiece and this pair of concerts will stay in my mind as an experience of the very best and most emotional in live music.
