Beth Gibbons Brings Haunting Performance to Tiny Desk

Beth Gibbons is celebrating the first anniversary of her debut solo album of original music, Lives Outgrown. On Monday, NPR released the singer’s performance for Tiny Desk, featuring songs from the studio album.

Gibbons opened her set with a haunting rendition of “Tell Me Who You Are Today,” surrounded by a full orchestra that included a viola, violin, bass, a metal bassoon, and a piano. The singer continued right into “Floating on a Moment,” as her band helped her with the backing ad libs.

The singer continued with the haunting “Lost Changes,” aided by the bowing of the violin and viola and the sound of the flute. “Love changes, things change/Is what changes things,” she sings. “Time changes, life change/Is what changes things.”

Gibbons ended her Tiny Desk appearance with “Mysteries,” from her 2002 collaborative album with Rustin Man, closing with a haunting, elongated vocal as she turned away from the audience.

The Tiny Desk performance arrives nearly one year after the release of her solo studio album debut. The musician made the album out of a series of deaths — “lots of goodbyes,” Gibbons said — of loved ones and friends over the past few years.

“I realized what life was like with no hope. And that was a sadness I’d never felt,” Gibbons previously said in a statement. “Before, I had the ability to change my future, but when you’re up against your body, you can’t make it do something it doesn’t want to do.”

She also released an album of Henryk Górecki interpretations in 2019 and dropped three albums as a member of Portishead over the years. In 2022, Gibbons reemerged to appear on Kendrick Lamar’s “Mother I Sober.”

Gibbons is also set to hit the road this summer with a tour through Australia, Europe, and Asia starting on May 30. She’ll also appear at Glastonbury and the Montreaux Jazz Festival.

From Rolling Stone US.