Portishead - Third

Portishead's third CD, brilliantly entitled Third, was released way back in April and here I am, three months later finally getting around to talking about it. There are many reasons for my tardiness and they are as follows:

1. Each Portishead release is meant to be digested. This is not fast food; theirs is the equivalent of experiencing a new culinary delight. This is something new to the palate, something exotic, something out of the ordinary and because of that, it deserves to have some time spent with it before rendering judgment.

2. It has been 10 years since their sophomore release. I haven't listened to Dummy and their self titled second in years, and I wanted to make some kind of accurate comparison. I know of many who feel Third is as masterful as anything else they've released, others have been disappointed. I wanted to spend some time revisiting the first two releases and form my own opinion as to the current relevancy of this band.

3. In the interim, I've received several CD's by more digestible bands, and been to a lot of shows featuring these bands. These are all slightly easier to blog about.

4. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm tired and a little bit lazy.

5. And finally, over the last three months, Third has been reviewed and blogged about quite extensively by people who are far more articulate and gooder at writin' stuff than I is.

Which brings me to this post. Taking reason #5 into consideration, this will be more of a gush and less of a review, although I'll be incorporating elements of both. The fact is, that I've become somewhat addicted to Third and all of its subtle charms. I've listened to it at least twice a day for the past week, and it still completely enthralls me. This is not an easy listen, but Portishead never is. Ten years is a long time to wait for a follow up release, and it's been my experience that the long awaited return release usually comes out in one of two ways. Either it's a nostalgic rehashing of previous glories; a return to form that either works really well (eg. Dinosaur Jr) or makes you realize just how immature you were the first time around (eg. Duran Duran.) OR it's just a really bad album. Portishead's Third is neither of these. I think it's safe to say that this is yet another direction for this experimental band. Oh sure, some of the regular elements are still there, Beth Gibbons' voice being the most obvious one. But while Dummy is clearly one of the pioneer releases in the genre they call trip-hop, and Portishead is a darker and spookier version of the same, I would have to say that Third is one of those rare releases that I would have to declare as genre-less. Or genre-full. Depending on how you look at it.

It opens with Silence, which begins with some muffled vocabulary, slight piano and then settles into a steady pulsating drive, sounding as if every instrument ever invented is working together in disheveled harmony. This is what I would refer to as a large song, the type that could be used in the title sequence of a movie, as long as this movie is the type that is meant to be grand in scale. Beth's voice is simply haunting in Nylon Smile. When she bellows "I don't know what I have done to deserve you" over an almost tribal rhythm, you can hear a slight leaning towards the psychotic, her voice giving out an off kilter warble of sorts. In The Rip, Beth harnesses her inner Nico, playing the chanteuse with a folksy guitar, before being joined by electronica type keyboards, making the song the most accessible song on the album. Plastic is very weird and chaotic. A strange chopping sound is one of many bizarre ambiances that can be heard in the background, and the song makes a few abrupt stops before once again hitting turbulence. Deep Water is almost bluegrass, meaning that it totally stands out in stark contrast to the rest of the album. On an album that is generally quite dark, the backing vocals on this brief ukulele ditty actually made me laugh out loud the first time that I heard it. Machine Gun was the first single I believe, and it's a very interesting choice at that. The title is clearly in reference to the sound of the backing electronic drum that permeates the track. Small is my favorite song, where the band serves up a saucerful of psychedelic Syd-era secrets, culminating in a heady hippie jam that would not have been out of place in an early 70's Barbet Schroeder film. Magic Doors is another song that flirts with accessibility, almost sounding a bit 60's-ish, albeit perhaps in an alternate universe. All the songs that I've mentioned thus far fall into the genre-less universe that I mentioned at the start. The band brings back their high quality Bjork meets trip-hop sound on two other tracks, namely Hunter and Carry On, which both remind me slightly of Dummy. The album closer, Threads, starts off in the same vein as these two, before venturing off to conclude with a creepy sounding fuzzed out guitar, that feels more like a cliffhanger than an ending. The fact that the band has already expressed an interest in getting straight to work on their fourth album makes me wonder if this was intentional. Whatever the case, Third is intense, to say the least, and the fact that I continue to find it entirely captivating tells me that I won't be getting sick of this one anytime soon.

Myspace: Portishead
Video: Machine Gun youtube