Portishead - Third Album Review (2008)

Portishead once defined the sound of a generation. In 1994 Bristol was the epicentre of the trip-hop electronic sound. Contemporaries Massive Attack had released Blues Lines and in the same year that gave the world Protection, which saw Tricky break from the band to go solo, Portishead made Dummy. It still is a spectacularly good album. The self-titled follow-up, after a three year gap, was a subtly different sound, expelling the thick electronic sampling and opting for a more organic sound. A year later Massive Attack’s Mezzanine arguably defined the end of the genre and Portishead disappeared. As the 1990s came to a close, a new chapter of music was beginning. It has taken nearly ten years for Portishead to make a third album. Imaginatively called Third, it is the result of three years work, of soul searching and of trying to rediscover a sound that has moved on like the world around it.

Third starts in very atypical style with Silence - a sampled voice (in Portuguese talking about ’the rules of the three’) leads into a very out-of-time collection of beats. It is only when strings emerge that the whole things starts to hold together. The most defining part of Porishead is Beth Gibbons. Her ghostly vocals appear after the two minute intro like a frail wounded animal trying to find a safe place to hide. The lyrics are suitably vague and melancholy: ’Empty in our hearts. Crying out in silence. Wandered out of reach’ etc, summing up the band lost in a vast wilderness for nearly a decade. Beyond this, the beats and strings trudge on and then stop suddenly.

Hunter sounds like the Portishead of old, with echoing vocals and ambient-industrial music, light and uplifting one minute then harsh and weird, like being thrust into a dark empty forest, the next. In essence it is a love song: ’I stand on the edge of a broken sky. And I will come down; don’t know why. And if I should fall, would you hold me? Would you pass me by?’. Gibbons’ vocals are sublime but Barrow and Utley add some perverse backing which breaks the joyous flow.

Nylon Smile follows with more of the same, this time with a more consistent musical flow. When Gibbons sings ‘Cos I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you’ and then ‘And I don’t know what I’ll do without you‘, it sounds as if she has never been away. There is a wonderful interlude of strange guitars and tribal drums, the space before filled with soft eerie waling. As the music stops, Gibbons has the last word: ‘I never had the chance to explain exactly what I meant‘.

The Rip is probably the first sign that Portishead still has something really great to offer. Gibbons is accompanied by simple looped guitar and sparse bass, allowing her voice to tell the story. Then the layered electronics take over and she is drowned out, all except for the waling again, by heavy fuzzy keyboards. When she returns, it is a different sound but equally great.

Plastic, like Hunter, is annoyingly disjointed and fragmented, turning dramatic and overblown. The helicopter-esque programming and drums create an uneasy backdrop so a song trying to emerge. Despite Gibbon’s best efforts, it never really does. A shame as the lyrics are frank and revealing as she talks about isolation and control: ‘On your stage a show that you create all by yourself. I am nowhere. You never notice. You are so sure’.

We Carry On is another master class. Unlike The Rip, the music is harder and takes the forefront over Gibbons’ echo. After the first verse, bells then drums appear - again fragments but more effective. The line: ‘oh can't you see? Holding on to my heart, I plead the taste of life’ is a real high point as the music comes back. This leads to even more dramatic looped guitars. When Gibbons returns she sounds even more determined for what is a subtly different reworking of the first verse and chorus. The effect is just as chilling and wonderful.

Deep Water provides a respite. It is absurdly different, like the band are sitting around a campfire someone in Arizona with nothing better to do. Again the lyrics, especially ‘Alone with my self-doubting, again’ could be a metaphor for the difficulties the band had getting to this point but it is all lost in the comedic delivery, particularly the backing vocals.

Fortunately this leads to one of the best tracks on the album. Machine Gun is another perfect example of the exploded genre, the pieces laid out and then reassembled. Barrow and Utley, this time, deliver a backing of electronic drums and guitars - another simple but effective arrangement with subtle depth, while Gibbons takes centre stage to assume a character. ’Here in my reflecting, what more can I say? For I am guilty for the voice that I obey. Too scared to sacrifice a choice, chosen for me’. Nothing sums up the futility of war and the current times better. In the second half of the song, the musical tone changes completely: the drums harder, more distorted leading to a short burst of Brad Fiedel soundtrack-esque keyboards.

Small does very little in its six and a half minutes. Two and a half of those minutes are taken up by light ambient gothic reminiscing ‘If I remember the night that we met. Tasted a wine that I’ll never forget’. The vocals are fragile and haunting with several voices at once, slightly out of time. Then the tone changes into some interesting old-worldly instrumental electronica. It is a bizarrely underwhelming five minutes. Even when Gibbons returns before the final dramatic minute of pounding keyboards and drums, it never quite works.

Magic Doors is another familiar sounding song. It has great structure and Gibbons shows incredible range in her vocals. Dramatic piano leads into the sublime ‘All the muse in myself
My desire I can't hide’. After a very promising opening, someone decides to add in a tuneless trumpet, again, breaking the flow.

Third closes with Threads, another haunting vocal performance and some great music but all a bit too flat and listless. The song descends into a series of over layered howling vocals, wonderfully atmospheric but very unnerving. The last minute of instrumentation is a strange series of echoing foghorns. Not quite the big finish.

Portishead has created its own unique brand of uneasy listening. The high points of the album are among the best songs the band has created and it is clear that Gibbons, Barrow and Utley are as determined and as interested in music as ever. There is real craft at work on this album. Occasionally the flow of a song is broken but some strange instrumentation or things get a little predictable, but at least the sound has moved on - an album full of rehashed sampling and scratching was not what anyone needed. The overall result is more like the eponymous second album. At times, this new form of modern electronic new-goth starts to drag but Gibbons delivers consistently great vocals through obscure retrospective lyrics that give the songs character and depth. Trip hop may be dead by Portishead lives on.

-- CS