By Paul Robicheau

Stripped of trip-hop trappings, Beth Gibbons’s fragile voice commanded through a ghostly filter effect as she sang with edgy emotion, peaking in the tagline, “How can it feel this wrong?”

Beth Gibbons at the Orpheum. Photo: Paul Robicheau

“Thank you for coming to Boston,” someone shouted between songs as Beth Gibbons turned to the shadows of the Orpheum Theatre stage without audible response Friday night. To be fair, it’s been 22 years since the notoriously shy English singer last played Boston with her Rustin Man collaboration and several more since she appeared locally with her signature band Portishead.

The occasion came in support of Lives Outgrown, Gibbon’s long-gestating and likewise acclaimed solo debut. Its bleakly atmospheric spell isn’t too far afield from that of Portishead, though that electronic outfit’s noir-cast spy guitar and trip-hop beats were phased out for more subtle, organic orchestration around Gibbons’s aching, spectral voice. And that impressively held true in concert, largely thanks to a shadowy seven-piece band that deftly filled its spaces.

Eion Rooney with Beth Gibbons at the Orpheum. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Recorded ambient music and stage fog lent an eerie prelude for Gibbons and her group to walk out and then slip into Lives Outgrown’s lead track “Tell Me Who You Are Today,” matched by low, oblique light. She sang softly, clutching her microphone on a center-stage stand as if hanging on for dear life, while bits of acoustic guitar, tapped drums, and violin drifted into place, topped by the burring hum of Howard Jacobs’s,

twisted, towering contrabass clarinet.

The low-key start began to breathe with the stealthy, melodic hooks of third number “Floating on a Moment,” violinist Emma Smith singing the tune’s high counterpoint to Gibbons. Then, with the airy sound and glowing sight of three musicians whirling fluorescent tubes to grab attention, “Rewind” erupted into an incessant Middle Eastern-styled undercurrent of strummed guitars, drum-roll eddies, and that imposing clarinet that Jacobs injected behind his fortress of percussive toys. “Gone too deep,” Gibbons sang, “gone too far to rewind.” And the song faded into Tom Herbert’s skeletal bass over a tribal throb.

From there, the stage was set for Gibbons and her group’s captivating shifts. “For Sale” posted male vocals in muted, hymn-like choruses opposite gypsy-styled strings. “Mysteries” (one of two songs from the singer’s Rustin Man project with Paul Webb of Talk Talk) exposed her vulnerable vocal over the fingerpicked guitar of Eion Rooney, who lent whistling to the following “Lost Changes.” And the discreetly flamboyant Jacobs played delicate vibraphone in “Oceans,” where the show’s sparse, textural arrangements began to lapse into a balmy cushion while purple-blue lights changed to green, fractal patterns.

Just in time, the Rustin Man number “Tom the Model” brought some welcome backbone in a backbeat that swung with strings from Smith and violist Richard Jones. “Beyond the Sun” added cyclical drive before the main set ended with a pastoral “Whispering Love,” Jacobs wafting a flute over Rooney’s fingerpicking.

Beth Gibbons at the Orpheum. Photo: Paul Robicheau

For the encore, the crowd cheered the opening keyboard chords of Portishead classic “Roads” from its 1994 debut Dummy, and that token didn’t disappoint. Stripped of trip-hop trappings, Gibbons’s fragile voice commanded through a ghostly filter effect as she sang with edgy emotion, peaking in the tagline, “How can it feel this wrong?”

Gibbons could do no wrong at that point. While the Lives Outgrown follow-up “Reaching Out” seemed superfluous by comparison, she hit a high note in the middle of the song that leapt from haunting smolder to stellar surprise. Granted, it wasn’t a physical feat to summon in the finale of a mere 13-song, 70-minute set. But it was nonetheless a riveting moment to round things out.

That and the fact that when it came time for the band to rise together and smile to ovations, the supposedly shy singer thanked the audience like a bubbling schoolgirl — and at the end, even approached fans at the edge of the stage to autograph a record. With the lights turned bright, any sense of gloom and mystery was gone. And Gibbons sure seemed glad she came to Boston.

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian in addition to writing and photography for The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.