Live Review: Beth Gibbons @ Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

Few voices are as instantly recognisable – or as haunting – as Beth Gibbons’.

Rising to prominence as the spectral, seductive presence fronting Portishead, Gibbons has long been synonymous with music that lingers: jazz-inflected, emotionally raw, and defiantly unpolished. Fourteen years after Portishead’s last Australian tour, Gibbons returned to the Opera House for her first solo outing – a set built around her 2024 LP Lives Outgrown, with scattered visits to past work and one or two beloved classics.

The opening notes of Tell Me Who You Are Today set the tone: pensive acoustic guitar, muted percussion, soaring strings. Something folkloric – even pagan – underpins the lyric, “A pagan sorrow my command”, while layered backing vocals evoke a kind of wintry renaissance. The lighting matches the moment, red and mauve flecked with crawling amber that deepens as the track darkens.

That interplay of light and sound proved a key element of the show’s atmosphere. Burden Of Life followed with a similarly heavy aesthetic: strings crying between verses, while Gibbons’ regretful voice moved through seasonal imagery and uneasy reflections. The staging contrasted the “Summer breeze” of the lyric with cool moonlit blues, creating a vivid sense of emotional dissonance.

Floating On A Moment brought baroque textures, a harpsichord ringing with bright overtones as the stage glowed green with blue outlines. The song balanced delicacy with weight – both instrumentally and lyrically – ending on the soft echoes of a flute. The elegance didn’t last long.

In an unexpected turn, the backing trio – drummer, percussionist, and keyboardist – brandished corrugaphones (whirly tubes) and spun them in unison, adding a moment of surreal levity before plunging into the grungy distortion of Rewind. The drummer staggered his beat to great effect, while the violist doubled as an electric guitarist, tearing jagged textures through the track.

For Sale felt almost like a theatrical aside, a moral fable dressed in melody. Gibbons’ delivery brimmed with vulnerability and understated theatricality. The instrumentation here felt oddly timeless – out of sync with current trends, yet utterly compelling – while her voice conveyed both poise and pain.

A brief moment of awkwardness arrived when Gibbons attempted to thank the audience, only for the applause to drown her out entirely. 

The tenderness resumed with Mysteries, drawn from her 2002 collaboration with Paul Webb (Rustin Man), Out Of Season. Its beauty lay in the cyclical guitar pattern and the ghostly sighs that threaded through the soundscape. Here, the lighting took on a deep blue wash, accentuating the melancholic tone.

Lost Changes came next, its lyrics framed like a quiet sermon: “Realise the tenderness, appreciate the sweet caress…” Gibbons presented this reflection on change with warmth and clarity, backed by a restrained but evocative arrangement.

Oceans carried that mood further, the strings creaking with a plaintive edge as Gibbons sang, “Tried to ignore that I might never win / ’Cause my heart was tired and worn…” The stage was awash in lilac and blue, an ocean of colour that mirrored the lyric.

The spectral edge of Tom The Model was less prominent live, yet the chorus retained its cinematic soul, and the shift to full blue lighting and shadow play on the Concert Hall’s curved walls enhanced the dreamlike quality. Beyond The Sun followed – a lyrically dense piece with a Bedouin feel in its instrumental transitions. Each song felt like a world unto itself, full of compressed emotion and elliptical insight.

Whispering Love was all autumnal tenderness – soft acoustic picking, warm flute, and downlights glowing like sunlight on a crisp day.

“Now I really don’t know what to say,” she admitted as the main set concluded. “Shout a bit and we come back.”

Then, the moment many had waited for. Roads, from Dummy, arrived with a resonant bass that felt grounded in the earth. Gibbons’ voice – older, less crisp than in 1994, but no less affecting – cut cleanly through. Indigo lighting bathed the stage in nostalgic reverence, while the two-piece string section added fresh emotional nuance.

Glory Box was glorious: familiar yet revitalised, playful yet poignant. Gibbons seemed to find new shades in the lyric – “Give me a reason to love you…” – while the band reimagined the instrumental with inventive flourishes. It was a rare thing: a classic reborn without fanfare or gimmick, just grace.

Then, finally, Reaching Out. A fitting close – solemn, sincere, and steeped in quiet power.

After the last note faded, Gibbons lingered. She stayed behind to shake hands with audience members at the front, a tender and generous gesture that matched the tone of the night. Then, less than two hours later, she did it all again.

This was a performance of fragility and control, intimacy and grandeur, warmth and distance – held together by the tensile thread of Gibbons’ unmistakable voice. A remarkable performance by an artist who, rather than retreating into nostalgia, continues to stretch toward something raw and real.