Beth Gibbons At The Opera House For Vivid Will Give You Goosebumps

It’s that Vivid time of year, the southern shore of the harbour is heaving, and Beth Gibbons is back in town after 14 years. Only this time it’s without the rest of Portishead, and she’s playing her debut Australian shows in the Opera House. Interestingly there’s a set at both 6pm and 9pm, her only Sydney shows on the tour.

The crowds are filing in for the 6pm show and the stage holds a variety of percussive, woodwind, and stringed instruments. The seats behind the stage, full of people for Sigur Ros last weekend, are concealed by a huge black curtain.

Blue tinted smoke fills the stage as the audience sits waiting, relaxed and chatty.

Gibbons arrives in Australia with nothing to prove. Her voice soundtracked the 90s trip hop wave, and Portishead stands alone with Massive Attack at the top of the trip hop podium.

Her 2024 solo album Lives Outgrown found wide praise from critics and fans, and primarily explores themes of aging and grief.

She emerges from the side of stage with a seven-person entourage of musicians and the room fills with applause. The gravity in the room has shifted and suddenly we’re all sitting in a more important space. Breaking into the opening track of Lives Outgrown, Gibbons’ voice is harrowing and spectacular.

The band plays the instrumentation beautifully, with the album’s percussive and bass-heavy elements really shining.

As the group pushes through Lives Outgrown in non-chronological order, Gibbons maintains a consistent stage presence. Dressed in black long sleeves for a silhouetted look, she wraps both of her hands around the microphone, slightly hunched, eyes closed. She doesn’t speak to the audience until around 5 songs in, when she says “thank you” with a nervous, giddy energy. Her singing appears both awfully draining, but effortless and sustainable.

Although the room would be fans of her primarily as the voice of Portishead, the performance of her new music is fantastic. Rewind is an instrumentally chaotic epic, and the percussion in Beyond The Sun is bouncy and driving. With Mysteries, a song off 2002’s Out of Season, the acoustic tone is noticeably lighter to the songs from her new album.

She thanks us before the encore, smiling while telling us “shout a bit and we’ll come back out”, which we did. Time for a couple of Portishead classics. Roads is fantastic. Then Glory Box. Full body chills ensue for the latter. First when the opening piano and bass notes kick in and then the chorus.

One of the people sitting next to me is showing their concert buddy the goosebumps on her own arm. Gibbons sounds exactly as she did on 1994’s Dummy.

After one more song from Lives Outgrown, now having played the entire album, the band bow to an audience lightning quick to its feet. Shaking the hand of everyone in the front row and giving a double thumbs up, Gibbons follows her band off the stage to get ready for the 9pm show.

The next audience is in for a special time.