the Color of Context

Portishead
Third: Not quite the charm, but still charming!
Mercury Records, Release date: 29 April 2008

By Joe DeRosa

By today’s record industry standards, 10 years can be a lifetime. Yet that’s how long it’s been since we’ve heard from Beth Gibbons, Adrian Utley and Jeff Geoff Barrow, the once holy trip-hop trinity collectively known as Portishead. In 1998, the group’s stellar live album from NYC not only highlighted the best moments from the previous year’s self-titled album and 1994’s Dummy, but showed us what this U.K. trio was truly made of. Live: Roseland NYC really captured Portishead’s essence, from the haunting vocals to the sweeping symphonic song structures to the scratching and sampling of the DJ, which was such an interesting contrast against the often hypnotic melodies. Alas, gone is the DJ from the group’s latest release, Third. But the band’s overall mood and tone has remained in tact and is sure to be pleasantly familiar for fans who’ve remained loyal despite the inexplicably long hiatus.

While not a whole lot has changed, Portishead’s latest does showcase a newfound versatility with tracks that range from the expected (“The Rip”) to the unexpected (“Machine Gun”) to the downright odd (“Deep Water”). “Silence,” the album’s opener, picks up right where Portishead left off a decade ago, with its sonic soundscape and Gibbons’ echoing vocals. A few tracks later is “The Rip,” which begins with a simple acoustic guitar that offsets Gibbons’ vocals, but eventually builds to an electronic cornucopia of sound that incorporates more and more musical elements as it unfolds, only to suddenly fade to a whisper. “Plastic,” by far the best song on Third, features a chaotic, yet mesmerizing, sound structure that starts and stops, fades and crescendos between virtually every line Gibbons bellows out. Then there’s the oddity of “Deep Water,” a duet between Gibbons and a ukulele backed by only the muffled singers of a barbershop quartet who could pass for ghosts from the Titanic. The music on “Machine Gun” approaches a hard, industrial style we’d sooner expect from Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen than from Portishead. The album closes in classic Portishead style with “Threads,” swelling to a reverberating sonic pulse before simply vanishing into nothingness.

With their third release, Portishead has proven themselves just as intoxicating as ever. But the question remains: After 10 years, why now? Had the group released this album, say, 8 years ago, we would have said, “Cool, another Portishead CD.” But after so long, you’d think that Third would be the second coming. And unfortunately, it just doesn’t pack that kind of punch. To put it simply, this is just another Portishead album, no better or worse than the first two. Only, for this one, we had to wait 10 years. By now, the trip-hop genre is all but extinct, so the band’s timing is a bit of a head scratcher. Even though they are and may continue to be fabulous, let’s face it: Today’s musical climate is tough. Still, musical trends occur in cycles. Who knows? In time, people may once again yearn for trip-hop acts like Faithless, Tricky and Massive Attack. For Portishead’s sake, I hope that time is now.