Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man: Out of Season

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

Beth Gibbons is the eerie voice of Portishead, the Bristol trip-hop outfit seemingly missing in action since their breakthrough brilliant debut Dummy and self-titled follow-up. "Rustin Man" is the nom de studio for Paul Webb, a former member of Talk Talk, so is possibly behind the brilliant bassline to a certain TT song being used here as an ISP jingle.

Together they are, yes, brilliant on an album which can evoke a similar spine-chill factor to the one Dummy first induced.

Only it does it with music which doesn't beg comparisons to Gibbons' other group, even with occasional production involvement of Adrian Utley, Portishead's sonic architect. It's not as tortured, for one thing. Overall, however, it's just as elegantly depressing.

And where Portishead could sound like hip-hop made interestingly askew by Soviet technicians, Out of Season is largely hushed, acoustic, and evocative of many other musical eras. Deliberately so, it would seem on Romance and Funny Time of Year, on which Gibbons channels Billie Holiday, which might seem unwise but for the devastating effect it has on both songs, especially the latter, which waltzes towards oblivion with ever-increasing menace for nearly seven minutes.

Then there's the opener, Mysteries, with Gibbons' sweetly subdued vocal over a finger-picked guitar, heavenly choir and hazy atmosphere; or Tom the Model on which she sounds like the creepy stepchild of Nick Cave and kd lang over a lush backing of twilight-zone Bacharach; or Drake, which suggests the jazz-kissed, hushed folk of namesake Nick.

It creates a world of lengthening shadows - and for us, unseasonal melancholy - in just a compelling 10 tracks and 43 minutes and emerges as the torch tune album of the year.

Label: Go Beat!