Out of Season

This is a difficult album to review, since it almost entirely escapes the random associations we often use to make sense of new music. Very little here sounds like any other band making music in the mainstream right now. I’m sure it’ll also baffle the CD stores — it seems like they file it in the ‘electronic’ section, simply because of Beth Gibbons also being the singer for Portishead.

But it’s not that. Not ‘electronic’ and not Portishead either, though the presence of her voice is such a strong signature that you’ll always think of Portishead when you listen to this.

Reading the fine print, you’ll find that her old Portishead cohort, Adrian Utley, is a player here too (together with two others from P’head’s live band, plus two Talk Talk members), but he’s not Rustin’ Man. Though you’d expect him to be a mate of Beenie Man, he’s nothing of the sort. Rustin Man is Paul Webb, erstwhile bassist for Talk Talk.

Now before you dismiss Talk Talk as a 80s band known pop for hits like ‘Give It Up’ and ‘It’s My Life’, delve a little deeper. After they made a fat wad with their second and third albums, they followed their artsy roots and made two critically acclaimed albums that sold comparatively poorly — pissing their record company off no end. Some say they started the post-rock movement with 'Spirit of Eden' (1988) and 'Laughing Stock' (1991), though in a slightly different manner from the other side of the Atlantic, where Slint and Tortoise did the business.

Those two albums are decent companions for 'Out of Season', though they’ll only serve as branches of the family tree, to which you can add the two Portishead albums. We’ll leave the history there.

'Out of Season' is an outstanding album. Made up of a beguiling mixture of styles, the overall perception is that of a great ‘lost’ album which could have originated in any decade since the 40s. At the same time, it would only ever have been possible now. Upon hearing it, one feels how the accumulated talents, experience and personal explorations of the different contributors — and the two songwriters — slowly disperse into the stream.

It’s old and new, packed with excellent compositions, singing that resonates with rare emotion and is performed by seasoned musicians from the first to last second.

It opens with ‘Mysteries’ — just a hush at first, a broken piece of music in the distance, then silence, a tiny little whistle, then the delicate guitar, Gibbons’ voice and throughout, the haunting backing vocals, which actually becomes the song’s most prominent feature. It’s folk music — all things small and beautiful — and you’ll wish it lasted for 60 minutes.

The ‘single’ is ‘Tom the Model’, a warm, swinging tune that bristles with instrumentation: strings, organ, horns and harmonica. Yet despite the many parts, the song is so seamlessly constructed — and seemingly effortlessly too — that all you’ll have time for is to sing along with Gibbons as she belts it out like she’s fronting Roxy Music.

The sleepy piano of ‘Show’ stills it down again, the voice changing to match it completely. Yet it won’t make you fall asleep — it’s that voice talking in the room next door which you’re straining to hear every word of. Lyrically, it touches on themes prevalent throughout the album: a contentedness with life, a refuge found beyond its serrated edges — that discovery that you don’t need the world to be happy, you just need you to be happy.

This isn’t to say Gibbons is chipper, for she’s far from it. If anything, she’s standing at the wood-chipper, admiring the morning quiet on the lake, then resuming to stuff a murdered man’s leg through the machine.

“There’s a life to be found in this world/ And now I see it’s all but a game,” she sings, and then later: “And daylight comes and fades with the tide/ I’m here to stay.” She sees and feels the beauty of life and nature, but the melancholy is a constant grey spot in the sky. ‘Show’ is less being a whole lot more.

On ‘Romance’, the voice is back in that tight, strained (you get the idea her hands are tied behind her back in the studio) mode, the music pumping slow horns and strings again. Sounds like a love song? Consider this: “Better the thought than the feeling/… All the things we suffer/ From the hands of humanity”. It rivals Joseph Conrad’s “Pairing off is the fate of mankind” as a deterrent to a relationship.

The strong natural scenery continues in ‘Sand River’, a kind postcard from a person who appreciates the changing of the seasons, but who can’t separate it from its terrible associations. But that’s probably just me reading too much into it. It’s quiet, with that inherent beauty of a loose shower on a hot day. So too, does ‘Spider Monkey’ start out, but the music slowly agitates underneath the voice, until it eventually usurps it, before finally spinning out with tinkly piano (or is that a Wurlitzer?).

‘Resolve’ is the kind of song few singers could give adequate life to. You think of old blues and soul singers when you hear this one. Bare of instruments, the listener is entirely led by Gibbons, who make you stand at a garden gate in the English countryside, looking up and down for the loved one. I could be wrong. ‘Drake’, presumably, is so titled because it nods to Nick Drake, one of the few connections one can make from this album to other musicians. It’s my favourite track here, Mark Feltham’s harmonica sufficient reason to make you kick out the lights, pour a drink and watch the world go to sleep from the comfort of your balcony. (I wish I had a balcony).

You’re now all set for the climax, as the initial paper-cut thin paranoia of ‘Funny Time of Year’ gradually builds towards truly riveting, yet utterly controlled, anger. Maybe it’s not anger, just dismay. Or acceptance: “There’ll be no blossom on the trees/ And time spent cryin’ has taken me in this year”. When it ends, you’ll be relieved, but you’d also want to relisten to it again and again.

‘Rustin Man’ is a more peripheral song, closing out what is one of the year’s most compelling releases in suitably atmospheric fashion. It’s music not for the sake of making music, but for the sake of making something with backbone, bite and long-lasting addiction.

(Now apparently they’re talking about a new Portishead album in the works… it could be a Merry Christmas after all.)

(Go Beat)