Eyes shut, feet bare, with the stage in virtual darkness, singer Beth Gibbons clings to her microphone stand as though to a sapling in a gale, a veil of blond hair periodically falling across her face. It’s a pose every bit as era-defining as the microphone stance of fellow 1994 alumnus Liam Gallagher. Oasis’s Definitely Maybe and Portishead’s Dummy both came out that year, the latter introducing Gibbons’s otherworldly, jazz-inflected voice.
Tonight, Gibbons’s instrument, flawless against the march of time, hovers over a backdrop of groans, drones and keening melodies coming from seven players backlit by a succession of dark reds and blues. Often, Gibbons turns away from the mic, as though unable to face the words she has just sung.
