Beth Gibbons: Lives Outgrown [DOMINO]

Why you'll love it

This pressing comes in a tip-on gatefold jacket with a lyric insert. Lives Outgrown was shortlisted for the 2024 Mercury Prize, reached No. 7 in the UK and topped the UK Independent Albums chart.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Tip-on jacket
• Lyric insert

About the album

Beth Gibbons has never been in a hurry. She announced plans for a solo album with Domino in 2013, and it took the best part of a decade more to finish, written slowly while she watched friends and family age, fall ill and move on. The result is the first album under her own name alone, and it sounds like every one of those years was put to good use.

She produced it with James Ford and former Talk Talk drummer Lee Harris, who co-wrote four of the songs, recording in places including a barn in Devon and Konk in London. Forget the trip-hop beats of Portishead; this is chamber folk built on hand percussion, strings, woodwind and a voice that can still stop a room. "Floating on a Moment" sways like a lullaby with a choir of children, "Reaching Out" stomps and swirls, "Lost Changes" and "Tell Me Who You Are Today" are full of quiet longing, and "Whispering Love" closes in a gentle hush.

Critics lined up behind it, and Time named it the best album of 2024. Gibbons has put out roughly one record a decade since the 90s, so we'd advise buying this one now rather than waiting for the next.

Also at Kops: more Beth Gibbons on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Domino, a reissue of the 2024 album.