The Artist: Beth Gibbons, Rustin Man
Beth Gibbons was already cult royalty by the time Out of Season arrived. As the voice of Portishead, she delivered one of the most haunting, human performances of the 1990s - fragile, raw, steeped in longing.
Rustin Man, meanwhile, is Paul Webb - once the bassist of Talk Talk, whose later albums (Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock) helped invent post-rock.
But this isn’t that.
Out of Season is something else entirely - ghost-folk, jazz-noir, a spectral cabaret. Gibbons sings like she’s lived every lyric. Webb surrounds her with delicate arrangements: brushed drums, upright bass, muted trumpets, dusty pianos.
The whole thing feels like it’s being played in a deserted candlelit bar.
It’s not a side project.
It’s a séance.
The Record: Out of Season (2002)
The album opens with Mysteries - just voice, strings and slow-burning ache. Gibbons sounds like she’s not singing, but remembering.
From there, the album drifts between moods: Tom the Model sways like a carnival band on opium, while Show tiptoes in with smoky jazz chords and a voice cracked open by grief.
Romance channels old cinema and late-night longing.
Sand River is almost surreal - loose and jazzy but anchored by emotional weight.
And Funny Time of Year feels like a winter soliloquy - dark, strange, truthful.
But the centrepiece might be Resolve - just piano and voice. So bare it feels holy.
These aren’t songs made for the charts.
They’re for the parts of you that time hasn’t healed.
Play Now:
🔊 Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube
Start With:
- Mysteries – Delicate, distant, full of ache
- Funny Time of Year – Smoke, snow and something unspoken
- Resolve – Just voice and piano. And everything.
