Beth Gibbons


Beth Gibbons is an English singer and songwriter. She is the singer and lyricist for the band Portishead.

Early life

Gibbons was born in Exeter, Devon, England and raised on a farm with three sisters. Her parents divorced when she was young. At 22, she moved to Bath, then Bristol to pursue her singing career, where she met Geoff Barrow, her future collaborator in Portishead.

Career

With Adrian Utley, Gibbons and Barrow released the first Portishead album Dummy in 1994 and have produced two other studio albums, a live album, and various singles in the years since.
She has also collaborated on a separate project with former Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb. Before she joined Geoff Barrow in Portishead, she had auditioned for the singer's slot in.O.rang, the group formed by Webb after Talk Talk's late-Eighties departure from EMI, but Portishead's sudden success pre-empted matters. In October 2002, they released the album Out of Season in the United Kingdom under the name Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man. The album peaked at number 28 in the UK Albums Chart. It was released in the United States a year later: while touring in North America, Variety favourably described her performance with Rustin as "Billie Holiday fronting Siouxsie and the Banshees".
Gibbons was also a judge for the 10th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.
In June 2013, Gibbons announced plans for a new solo album with Domino Records. She contributed vocals to a cover of the song "Black Sabbath" with the British metal band Gonga, entitled "Black Sabbeth", released on 24 April 2014.
In 2018, Gibbons contributed vocal performances, along with Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, to the Spill Festival held in Ipswich in an audio installation entitled 'Clarion Calls', which uses the voices of 100 women to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One.
Her 2019 album, recorded with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Górecki: Symphony No. 3 , was released in March. The recording was made during a 2014 concert. Gibbons had to study the Polish language especially for this performance.

Style and inspiration

She has cited Nina Simone, Bono of U2 for his performance on The Joshua Tree, Otis Redding and Jimmy Cliff as a musical inspiration. She has named Janis Joplin, Edith Piaf, Janis Ian and Elizabeth Fraser.

Discography

Portishead