ARTICLES ABOUT BETH'S ALBUM "OUT OF SEASON"

Portishead remain silent, but Gibbons hasn't been sitting round on her hands. This sees her collaborating with long time friend and former Talk Talk/L'Orang man Paul Webb for an album that melds the comedown moodiness of both bands but without any beats and a more delicate, soul-folk ambience. Recording with proper instruments affords a far more organic feel to the music, a sense that here are actual emotions to be twisted and chewed over as Gibbons' expressive voice moves between deep torch song soul and ghostly folk. The latter's well in evidence on the opening Mysteries, a delicate hymnal of the heart, the sombre piano driven Show in which she sounds like a more intense Janis Ian, Sand River's autumnal decay (nature images figure large throughout, informing themes of mortality and the shifting of well, seasons) and Spyder where echoes of Leonard Cohen's melancholic splintered melodies ripple through Webb's guitar. Drake rather inveitably summons the ghost of Nick but with its mournful harmonica turns out to be in more of leafy jazz musical frame of mind that more accurately harks to the 40s colours of Billie Holiday that inform Gibbons' soul influences. You'll hear Nina Simone in there too, though the bluesy Romance is pure Eartha Kitt down to the adenoidal kittenish sleaze.

Tom The Model comes with big brass and orchestral flourishes and an unmistakable hint of the early big Italian-drama soul of Dusty Springfield mixed into the surging swells, but it's the downbeat and hushed sadness that gives this project its beguiling magic, working its spell to consummate effect on the lengthy Holiday-ish Funny Time Of Year with only the sonic experimentation of Rustin'Man itself, one of the first tracks to emerge from the collaboration, with Gibbons' voice treated through a vocoder, spoiling the overall reverie.