THIRD

Portishead (album)

Ten years between albums is a hell of a long time to wait, so if you're finally going to stick your head above the parapet and release something new, it really should sound like you've spent a decade working on it. Now then, there are times during this album where Portishead attain greatness, but on the other hand there are also a couple of ocassions where I was wondering whether certain parts were worth the wait. What's beyond doubt though, is that Portishead have been to some pretty unhappy places during the making of this album, because you don't come up with something like this if your life is all sun, sea and smiles. The album opens with Silence (what it's called, not what it is), which sounds like drums rolling around the studio floor while the guitarist practises and Beth Gibbons sings. It's actually rather wonderful, although my description probably hasn't helped. Hunter is a perfectly serviceable slowie that sounds like it could've come from a 1960s British thriller, but it's spoiled by a keyboard riff cutting in without warning (or any need). It's not even playing at the same speed from what I can tell. After that comes Nylon Smile, which sounds a bit like Lemon Jelly after an extraordinarily bad day, and then there's The Rip. This is another one of the album's highlights. It starts off a bit quiet, just the singer and a guitar to begin with, but then about two minutes in it transforms into something much more electronic - actually, it turns into the sort of song Midge Ure would've sold his granny for in the early eighties. That's not to say that Portishead have forgotten what it was that got them their fanbase in the first place, because Plastic starts out as Son Of Glory Box, but even that gets twisted into something even darker and menacing - to be honest, it makes Glory Box look like Can We Fix It in comparison. We Carry On goes on for six and a half minutes and there's all sorts going on here. Tribal beats, seemingly out-of-tune guitars, and what sounds like several different tunes being played at once. I like it, which should be more than enough to kill its chances of becoming a hit. As for Deep Water, it's a "What the Hell?" moment. Beth Gibbons + Ukelele = one and a half minutes of total unexpectedness and a rather sweet song, which gets swept away by Machine Gun, which sounded pretty damned breathtaking as a single, but as part of the album it sounds right at home. The daft thing is, there's nothing else on the album that sounds remotely like it. It precedes Small however, which is something of a disappointment. It's the longest track on the album, but it takes a couple of minutes before anything happens, and then after that it turns into a mental Summer Of Love experimentation type thing that wouldn't sound out of place on the soundtrack for Easy Rider. It has its moments, but the slower parts go on just a bit too long for me. After that, you've got Magic Doors, which is about as close as you'll get to a commercial song here (when I say "close", I actually mean "a million miles away"). It's got backwards sounds and pianos and halfway through it loses the plot completely, but on the other hand, how many other songs sound as though they've got an elephant singing along with Ms Gibbons? Finally, there's Threads. Another song that harks back to how they used to sound, this one ends with the same riff being repeated over and over after the song fades out, which is a rather nifty way of ending the proceedings and just a tad unsettling. Now I come to think of it, something that jumped out at me while listening to this album is that the playing isn't perfect - there are little mistakes dotted about throughout the album. You'll hear the odd notes or beats not quite coming in at the right time and guitar strings squeaking here and there. However, that's not a complaint, not in the slightest. In fact, the minor errors add to the experience and considering I'm not really a fan of Portishead, I was really impressed with this album. What I would say though, is that this is a grower - it took me a couple of listens before I could fully appreciate what they'd done, but maybe I'm just slow.