Paula Rae Gibson - The Roles We Play To Disappear (33 Xtreme, 2024)

By Sammy Stein

The Roles We Play To Disappear will be released by acclaimed artist Paula Rae Gibson on Fri 1st of November on 33 Xtreme label.

It is an album of experimental songs, and electronica written and produced collaboratively with electronic musician and trumpeter, Alex Bonney and award-winning pianist, Kit Downes with notable contributions by Rob Luft on guitar and Matthew Bourne on piano, cello, and synth.

The album was already featured at an exhibition of Paula's portraits of emotion, ‘Be Alive With Me’ – a photographic tribute to her late husband, British film director Brian Gibson – which exhibited Tuesday 1st– Sunday 6th October 2024 at Fitzrovia Chapel, London, W1T 3BF.

Gibson has the gift to transfer emotion from her heart and soul into the music she creates and here she excels. This album is a stark, deeply emotive song cycle and the way Gibson puts sounds and musicians together and how the music has been produced could be compared to several others but in truth, it is pure Gibson, and the sound is uniquely hers. The press office informed me this album was ‘brilliant and utterly beautiful’ and they were right. This is the embodiment of ensemble work across which vocal lines pitch and pivot to capture and deliver specific and intimate emotions in a beautifully worked manner. Completely immersive, this music gets to your soul, traversing genres and delivering heartfelt, soul-warming music.

This song cycle explores deep emotions including some of the darker facets of commitment to a relationship like breakdown, and entrapment and Gibson creates a sense of intimacy as she reveals layer after layer of her inner self. Yet, despite the emotional energy the music contains, Gibson retains pitch and control of tone and volume and there is clearly a deep resonance between the music supporting the voice and the vocal lines. The musicians are given places to shine too and one of the characteristics of this recording is the quality of the ensemble work. Gibson occupies the periphery of the music at times, while emerging from its core at others, creating a sense of ethereal, spiritual connection.

There is urgency, a sense of not understanding yet also at other times deep insights into the soul, memories, and the transforming power of time, peace, and above all, connective love. It is difficult to put into words the emotional charge that feels contained within the songs and lyrical lines and the music perpetuates this instinctively with arrangements that soar and rise at the perfect moments.

‘Heart Off The Hook’ is deeply moving with Gibson’s vocals strikingly atmospheric across the delicately placed percussive background. At times, the whispering eeriness of Gibson’s voice is so moving it deftly embodies the lyrical narrative of the number. The story is of giving oneself, ‘no one gets invited to my heart for very long’ yet listen further and you realise– they surely did. The echoed piano notes in the final phrases offer a sense of a void into which those emotions are being tipped.

‘Ashes As Confetti’ develops from the backdrop of electronic soundwaves with Gibson asserting vocal lines across the top. The warping keys and intricate percussive rhythms vie perfectly creating a density of sound Gibson’s ghostly voice rises phantom-like above.

‘Necessary Drama’ is lighter, airy and features stringed effects and chorded delights, across which Gibson flits and dips, her rich, warm voice questioning the meaning of love and leaving. The shocker of the final line, ‘She buried her son, her friends, her husband, her everyone’ sums up the atmosphere and heartfelt depths of the number.

The beautifully worked ‘The Silence and The Shadow’ is a perfect vehicle for highlighting the talents of Alex Bonney’s trumpet as it drops in periodically, releasing temporarily the genie that wafts across the surreal lines of voice and background.

Gibson is adept at using her voice to encapsulate profound thoughts, sometimes sad and often with deeper meaning. From the brooding dark energy and gorgeous harmonics contained in ‘My Hope’s Back’ to the brightness of ‘Necessary Drama’ and the twists and turns (as that number is not on a light subject) that surprise and capture the listener.

The easy, relaxed essence of ‘Fall Into You,’ about the uniting of souls, and the interesting noises in the background belie the charged emotions of the track. The short ‘Lover Two Takes You To Lover Three’ is worth its 48 seconds because this track evolves into ‘Makes No Difference to The Trees’ which is a delight of spoken and sung voice, electronic atmospheres, and intricate rhythms, that seem to capture energy like an intake of breath that is held and then exhaled in waves and ripples of sonic delight. The contained energy builds and builds. ‘I Am Not’ is simply glorious with a wonderful deep ‘cello voice pitted against Gibson’s breathy, vocals.

Many of the tracks seem to carry a pulse, like a heartbeat and this maybe encapsulates the life force that feels like it works its way through this music.

The eerie, surreal ‘3 Am Always’ morphs into ‘Ashes as Confetti’ reprise which in turn develops into an energised, slightly unbalanced number that closes this album perfectly with male and female voices pitched across a percussive background, topped by warping strings, among them a wonderfully deep bowed ‘cello line. The final spoken words are ‘I can’t save you’ but this album does just that. It saves us from complacency, and despair because, while there is music like this, there is hope. This album is a thing of beauty, period.