Breaking Down (Genre) Barriers
It took Portishead 11 years to release its third album. It was worth the wait.By Kriston Capps
July 1, 2008
Portishead Third
Things have changed in the 11 years since Portishead’s self-titled sophomore album. Gone are the fierce genre divisions that once partitioned CD stores, the “alt/pop” labels segregated from the “R&B” ones. Mostly gone, for that matter, are CDs and CD stores. Trip-hop has fallen by the wayside not only as a useful category but as a stylish sound. Portishead came to emblematize (if not invent) the genre with Dummy, its 1994 debut, and trip-hop audiophiles have greeted the end of Portishead’s long hiatus with nearly religious anticipation. They might have been disappointed with the result, Third.
But no one else should be. Third defies easy genre classification but doesn’t break new experimental ground. It is so far removed from its predecessors that it could hardly count as a departure for the band, and technically speaking, it isn’t. If anything, Third is a more traditional album, placing song craft over sampling. In one very important respect, though, Third is quite different from Portishead’s other albums: It’s a rewarding series of jazzy revelations.
There have been no great changes in Portishead’s lineup or scope. Beth Gibbons’s delicate vocals are still front and center: brittle and sultry and significantly less effect-laden than on previous efforts. Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley continue to play utility positions as producer/instrumentalists, with the latter responsibility the greater burden on this album—and with a particular emphasis on Utley’s guitar. The move toward a more live sound is pronounced. “Silencer,” the album’s opener, sets the tone, with atmospheric strings playing a secondary role to a driving rhythm section topped off by stinging, chorus-pedaled electric guitar.
Portishead even teases the listener with “The Rip,” a ballad that begins with, of all things, arpeggios plucked on acoustic guitar, before swelling into a driving synthesizer denouement. For a band that’s taken a more electronic tack in the past—aside from the vox, Dummy was made almost exclusively using samples—Portishead taps the traditional on Third. The effect can be deceptive, though: The difference between verse and chorus is sometimes paper-thin. The song structures aren’t so much unconventional as they are very simple. The effect is admirable, a show of restraint. “Hunter,” for example, is a languid, low-tempo love song alternating between Gibbons’s voice and Utley’s guitar that unfolds over a seamless backdrop of short, minor-pitched guitar pulses. Like the genre categories, the distinction between verse and chorus is nearly indeterminate.
Simplicity is next to minimalism on “Machine Gun,” a hefty, industrial package of Bauhaus-ian beats and metallic sampler noise worthy of Pretty Hate Machine. Clocking in at just under five minutes, it’s an accessible application of Einstürzende Neubauten–esque sounds, with one rhythm stated and re-stated over a variety of machine-made pitches. As a single, “Machine Gun” brags about the album’s scope: It’s accessible, but not all that accessible. Gibbons’s vocals match the plaintive lyrics (“If only I could see/ Return myself to me/ And recognize the poison in my heart”) in a tune that sounds like a Gaelic folk song, while pumps and pistons beat out repetitive phrases. The single closes in a noble crescendo played on a laser-sounding synthesizer, a sound that might have been borrowed from the prog group, Zombi.
An entire generation of acid rock comes to mind with the pitched Hammond organ and snare triplet on “Small”—particularly the men on the chessboard and hookah-smoking caterpillar from Jefferson Airplane’s “Go Ask Alice.” Gibbons, too, is singing about trippy-sounding stuff: “Small, tasteless, and forgot/ Hoping to see, blinded like me/ You tried to understand, but you’re just a man.” And Gibbons also channels Grace Slick when she takes the chorus up an octave in a wavering cry on the album closer, “Threads.”
Gibbons’s voice is the crucial instrument in Portishead’s repertoire. On Dummy it was Gibbons’s pinched vocals, her way of delivering vintage woe in the vein of a widow in a detective story on songs like “Sour Times,” that set Portishead apart. The sound was more sophisticated but basically unchanged on Portishead, the follow up. But if you wrote out the songs in sheet music, her part would probably look on paper like something other than lead vocals—maybe a backing piano line, given the way that her notes tend to hover and trail. It’s hardly to Portishead’s detriment—her voice is its most distinctive feature.
This very loveliness of timber also means that the lyrics sometimes take a back seat, but there are exceptions. On “Nylon Smile” from Third, for example, Gibbons sings, “Cause I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you/ And I don’t know what I’ll do without you.” Singing over a slinky, sexy, feline beat, Gibbons is singing something much darker than the straightforward reading of her words suggests. She’s not hurt; she’s relieved herself of a burden.
Portishead may in fact be a contemporary Jefferson Airplane, with a stand-alone female voice and a strong fondness for a certain kind of minor chord. But the band also resembles, at least with the release of Third, one of its more prominent peer groups: Radiohead. The rush of strong piano chords on “Magic Doors” isn’t anything that Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood couldn’t accomplish, but the wailing, garbled, warbling saxophone probably made him green with envy. That moment on that track is a standout not just in Portishead’s short but strong discography but over all releases this year.
More generally, there are other similarities between the ‘heads: lyrics that feel like hopelessness teetering on hope, distinctive vocals but also distinct ways of phrasing them, a sense that no one in the band plays any specific instrument throughout. (It should come as no surprise that a Youtube video has emerged recently of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood playing an acoustic cover of “The Rip” during a down moment on Radiohead’s current tour.)
The roving instrumentation is by design on Portishead’s part, which set out with Third to make an album without falling back on repeating anything that it might have done in the past. That this album was made with that sort of restriction in place is a testament to the band’s understated touch: The album is diverse, stylized, simple, and rewarding.
Third is a departure from Portishead’s previous albums in two ways: It is a much straighter presentation of songs, with nothing in the way of retro airs or sample crutches, and it’s a confident jazz album that casts a tall shadow over the band’s prior efforts. It will be a minor classic if Portishead doesn’t make good on it again, or it will be a touchstone second debut for one of the United Kingdom’s strongest groups. Third is probably best understood as a discovery. The band has said that even with this very recent release, it is still writing new material. Fans were probably surprised that after 11 years Portishead had such songcraft in it. The band members probably even surprised themselves.
Kriston Capps is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C. His writing on art and music has appeared in the Washington City Paper, the Guardian, and ARTnews. He blogs at GrammarPolice.
Social Bookmarking
--------
Comments
I love Portishead but this new album is a disappointment. Honestly there are only 3 good songs. (1) Beth vocals often get lost behind the rumbling music (2) the music is rumbling…nothing seems to connect its constantly jumping from one theme to the next…these leaps of faith leaves the listener in a “wtf was that” state. (3) after the long wait i was expecting something nothing short of perfect.
This album is great attempt but it definitely missed the mark
— Sobbie - Jul 2, 08:27 PM - #