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Portishead - Third
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It’s been 11 years since Portishead released their slightly awkward and intermittently rewarding self-titled second album. Portishead was the sound of Geoff Barrow, Adrian Utley and Beth Gibbons shying away from the commercial success of 1994’s groundbreaking debut Dummy – widely credited for spawning the Bristol area’s trip-hop sound.
Well, it may have taken more than a decade, but Third is the sound of a band back at the height of their powers, a band desperate to be heard again. Naturally things have moved on sound-wise, and much has been made of Third being cold, dark and less likely to be played as background music at dinner parties.
On first listen it’s certainly a conclusion that’s hard to resist. The single ‘Machine Gun’ is a minimalist electro-drum stab with Gibbons’ beautiful, ethereal voice floating over the top before a pounding bassline and heavy synths take it to a claustrophobic and intense finish. But while there’s nothing like the warm melodic flow of Dummy’s ‘Glory Box’ here, the album ebbs and flows in an intriguing, slightly uncomfortable way, further revealing its box of tricks over repeated listens – the mark of a great album.
So the enchanting, haunting ‘Hunter’ rubs shoulders with the epic Krautrock-meets-guitar squall of ‘We Carry On’ – the music always carried forward by Beth’s end-of-the-world vocals. Then there’s the minute-and-a-half long doo-wop ukulele-bothering ‘Deep Water’, and ‘Magic Doors’, which is the closest they come to a conventional melodic song – albeit a rather downbeat one.
It won’t be to everyone’s taste and it requires some patience, but Third is going to be a tough album to top in 2008.
Chris Nye-Browne
