HOW TO HIDE ON STAGE AND STILL BE SENSATIONAL

She is simultaneously electrifying…and invisible.

Beth Gibbons, on stage at The Roundhouse in London last night, was physically hiding in plain sight in the way introverts do.

But her voice doesn’t hide. It soars over us, surges through us, and thrills us.

And it’s that voice, seemingly infused with heartache and loss, which seems to open up a portal into her soul.

It all comes pouring out in the most exhilarating way.

Most of the set is made up of songs from her first completely solo album, Lives Outgrown, which came out last summer. It’s a collection of glorious songs full of emotion and seemingly informed by life’s experiences. Gibbons is now 60.

Compared to her three albums with Portishead, the music has softer edges, is less electronic, has more use of sumptuous strings, and percussion that’s less insistent.

She sings with both hands gripping the microphone like her life depended on it. But she’s never really in the spotlight, more in a half-light or in silhouette created by the lighting effects.

When she’s not singing, she moves to the back of stage, diffidently facing away from the audience, taking a quick drink or swaying gracefully until the next cue to sing.

I could almost imagine her mouthing to one of her fellow musicians: “Why are all these people here?”

We know why we’re here. Not just because most people at the Roundhouse would probably agree that Dummy, which catapulted Portishead to fame in 1994, is one of the greatest ever British albums, but also because she has made a very fine album of her own.

Of her new songs, I particularly loved Tell Me Who You Are Today, the melodic Floating on a Moment and Whispering Love, which was the last song before the encore.

I don’t know all of the lyrics to her new tracks, and I certainly don’t know what they all mean. But the song Oceans feels particularly suffused with meaning, and perhaps regret for what might have been.

When we got to the encore I had to bite my own knuckles to suppress the excitement as the trip-hoppy strains of Roads began, to be followed by Glory Box, both sung so exquisitely you find yourself holding your breath.

Glory Box is a song that has been in my fantasy Desert Island Discs list for the last 31 years, ever since the release of Dummy - when all of us were so much younger.

Gibbons has rarely done interviews. I watched one on YouTube which was filmed outside, I think next to the canal in Bristol, in 1995. She didn’t really want to be there, and didn't really know what to say.

The instant fame had not been expected, and to this day she seems interested only in the creativity, not the celebrity.

So at the Roundhouse, there was no “Hello London!! Are you having a great time?”. No real stagecraft, no stories to tell us.

But we didn’t expect that, and we didn’t care. Her stories are perhaps buried in her songs, and her shyness is part of her mystique.

We only needed her to sing.