Pages tagged “portishead”

Unleashing a new record and refining its musical approach, the British trip-hop outfit that beat out Oasis for the coveted Mercury Prize in 1995 breaks more than a decade of silence, weaving its hypnotic grooves for 21st-century music fans. Looks like the soundtrack to existential dread has hit its sour stride once again.

A decade removed from reigning over trip-hop’s dark kingdom, Portishead returns with more uneasy listening

In the music industry’s accelerated calculus, 10 years can contain a lifetime’s worth of activity. Since Bristol, U.K., trip-hop trio Portishead released its eponymously titled studio album in 1997, we’ve observed the following earthly phenomena: a third of the music industry’s value erased since 2000, major labels on the endangered species list, the popularity explosion of digital file formats (thus dooming what were once quaintly known in the 20th century as “record stores”), the rise and fall of Britney Spears. It’s enough to give you vertigo.

Portishead may have taken an extended group hiatus, but it’s not as if its members made like Rip Van Winkle, sleeping through the millennial turnover only to awaken and find that trip-hop (gasp!) had essentially disappeared. Beth Gibbons, the group’s sonic doppelganger for Billie Holiday, released the spellbinding (if understated) 2002 album Out of Season in partnership with Talk Talk’s Paul “Rustin’ Man” Webb. And Portishead’s resident beat alchemist, Geoff Barrow, remixed tracks from Gravediggaz and The Pharcyde while producing The Coral’s fourth LP in partnership with official Portishead third wheel Adrian Utley, the band’s invisible jazzbo instrumentalist.

All of this converges to make Third (the group’s third studio effort) that much more unlikely and remarkable. Portishead’s version of trip-hop has always overweighted the “trip” quotient when compared to hip-hop worshipping contemporaries such as DJ Shadow, U.N.K.L.E. and fellow Bristolians Massive Attack and Tricky; Barrow was as likely to sample film-noir soundtracks or the minor-key orchestrations of Lalo Schifrin as he was to go cratedigging in the Eric B. & Rakim archives. And then there was Gibbons’ shadowy voice, which often sounded more like a sampled artifact than the rare grooves in which the band traded. Her voice gave Portishead’s music a wounded, heartsick quality that elevated it to an altitude safe from the passing fads of pop culture. Trip-hop may have died a quiet, timely death in the intervening years, but Gibbons’ otherworldly gift guaranteed that Portishead’s music would survive any drought with its soul largely intact.

Third is far and away the best, most punk thing in the Portishead catalog: a deeply transgressive album that bears a passing similarity to its predecessors but leaves most of the baggage behind in favor of a full-blown reset. It’s shocking enough to almost (but not quite) make you forget about the intoxicating “Sour Times,” from the band’s immortal 1994 debut Dummy. What Barrow and Gibbons have cooked up now ain’t no party, ain’t no disco, ain’t no fooling around. Third’s songs begin in a foreign tongue as though we’re accidentally walking in on a scene we’re not meant to see (the Portuguese soliloquy that opens “Silence”), they end without warning or are cut off in the rudest possible fashion (the tribal-sounding death knell “Nylon Smile”), and they strike Teutonic poses that seem more like Krautrock-meets-“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (the devastating “We Carry On,” the electronic weaponry of “Machine Gun”) than the mood music for which Portishead is known.

And then things get really weird. “Magic Doors” finds Barrow clamping the DJ cans over his ears, pitching some carefully-selected funk groove down to its slowest possible speed, then ladling Gibbons’ sad-sack soul over the top of the steaming mass like the last of the Mrs. Butterworth’s before a distorted sax solo is pinned onto the donkey at the bitter end, as if Ornette Coleman had wandered into the room, given one heartfelt blast for old time’s sake, then departed just as suddenly as he arrived. “Deep Water” is 1:36 worth of musical feint: Gibbons backed by ukulele, with a weirdly slowed-down men’s barbershop chorus accompanying her as she squeaks out such uplifting sentiments as “I’m drifting in deep waters; alone with my self-doubt again.” Imagine Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters’ duet in The Jerk, “Tonight You Belong to Me,” performed while bombs fall around them and Armageddon approaches, and you’re more than halfway there.

The album’s closing track, “Threads,” is the one song that sounds the most like the group’s past work: a doomsday, b-movie symphony in which the brightest spot is Gibbons’ insistence that “I’m worn out thinking of ways; I’m always so unsure,” with the final 45 seconds devoted to gigantic, sweeping guitar swells that sound like some kind of air-raid warning system wailing over London. What Portishead has created is the post-modern blues: a manifesto for the new millennium, an appropriate response to a world that’s more fucked-up now than it was when the band went into hibernation. For Portishead, times are more sour than ever.

Paste senior contributing editor Corey DuBrowa lives in Portland, Ore. His recent articles for Paste include a profile of Stephen Malkmus and an investigation into the current relevance of Seattle’s music scene.

As a musical movement, trip-hop was definitely limited to a specific time and place. Nowadays, once people hear those dusty breakbeats, the light jazz melodies and the diva warbling, they can more or less pin a typical trip-hop track to its mid-'90s U.K. home. On the flipside, however, the music of Portishead has proved remarkably durable in the decade-plus since the band graced the world with its staggering debut, Dummy. From the lurching, martial rhythm of "Mysterons" to the final bow of "Western Eyes," Portishead's two albums of original material effectively wrote and then closed the book on an entire genre.

Since a 1998 live release, the group has gone deathly silent, adding to its considerable legend. Although members have stayed active with side-projects, there has always been a hope that Portishead's extended hiatus would come to an end. Finally, a surprise reunion performance between Portishead's three principal members earlier this year got the ball rolling on a new album. Since then, producer/multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow has kept fans updated of the project's progress via the band's blog. The following entry appeared on Tuesday from Barrow:

"we went to london for a fews days to finish up. we worked in molko 9 back in ~Bristol now working on some art work and getting the live stuff together. i think one more day messing about with it and it will be done. then into the wonderful world of mastering.. [joke]"

Essentially, a new album is in the bag, although when it sees the light of day is anyone's guess at this point.

In the meantime, Portishead has focused its efforts on curating its own iteration of the long-running All Tomorrow's Parties festival, entitled "The Nightmare Before Christmas." As you might expect, the lineup blends all of the disparate genres that informed the band's first two albums: the ambient electronics of Aphex Twin, the layered post-rock of groups like Boris and Oneida, and a hip-hop delegation that boasts Stones Throw producer Madlib and Wu-Tang member GZA. Of course, Portishead itself will be on hand to perform as well. It all goes down Dec. 7-9 at the Butlins Holiday Centre in Minehead, U.K.. Check the link above for ticket information.

Related links:
Portishead on MySpace
[P] - A Portishead Fansite
YouTube: Portishead - "Sour Times" Live

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