Okay, that's a bit hyperbolic but the claim is based largely on the fact that this band took ten years off and came back with a record that very easily could have just been another Portishead album that relied on the sound they're already known for. Nope. That's not what they did at all. While a return to the Portishead sound of old would have been welcomed with open arms, that just wasn't in the cards for Geoff Barrow, Adrian Utley and Beth Gibbons. I'm sure the fact that "trip-hop" the genre they helped lay the blueprint for has long since died had something to with the direction the band has taken the P'head sound.
What Portishead did was simply intentionally destroy the "Portishead sound." Obliterate it. If you thought Dummy and Portishead were melancholy affairs then Third is flat out apocalyptic. This album is ugly, it's nasty, it's unpleasant, it's uneven. It's a jarring slap in the face from a band absolutely DARING you to play this in the coffee shop you may work in. (Which is EXACTLY what I'm going to do!) This is NOT background music. This is the soundtrack to the end of our days, and it absolutely rocks.
josh [email] said at 1:29 PM 04-29-2008: your review has succeeded in making me interested in a record i was definitely assuming would be terrible. though suppossedly they were good at coachella.
reggie [email] said at 11:35 AM 04-30-2008: I meant to respond to this earlier but now I see how it affects your assessment of the record. Nonetheless here's my belated response:
Whether or not the beats are good is irrelevant, at least in the context of this album (as you discovered.)
julie [email] said at 7:53 PM 04-30-2008: I hear it all the time blasting out the door when I walk by. I just don't come in to say hi because I'm afraid I'll trip over a baby stroller or the power cord of a MacBookPro and injure myself. Or be stabbed in the eye by an over-gelled fauxhawk.
brianbibbly [email] said at 1:45 PM 05-02-2008: Clearly you two aren't "with it,." I mean, HELLO!!!! Uh, the Macbook Pros has the MagSafe power adapter that disconnects safely when bumped into. I MEAN, GAWD!!!!!!
reggie [email] said at 11:14 PM 04-29-2008: You can't hear some tracks of this. It has to be taken as a whole. I couldn't imagine just playing a song or two for someone that I was trying to get interested in it.
It's so good. It's so ugly, so disjointed yet somehow it's cohesive. It's like Portishead never existed and this is a new band calling themselves Portishead.
reggie [email] said at 11:16 PM 04-29-2008: I like it. Unfortunately, it's taken a back seat to Third. But I'm going to see them in a few weeks so I'll probably give it a better listen then. But my first impression is that somehow the Roots just continue to get better. It's scary actually.
reggie [email] said at 11:56 PM 04-29-2008: Also, three tracks into Maths & English and I have to say that Dizzee Rascal is crazy good. In fact, he's arguably the most talented rapper in the world. The keyword there is "talented." I ain't saying he's the best, he's just immensely talented. He produces his own tracks and I think that's because he doesn't believe there's anyone else who could. I don't know if I agree with him but what proof could I possibly offer to challenge that when his own production is so assured?
What blew me away about his first album, Boy in da Corner was how hungry Dizzee seemed, so it's impressive that the hunger remains. And he's so young. For someone to have this fully realized a sound and to be aware of how best to present it to the world three albums deep is pretty remarkable.
(p.s. what force of nature would it take to get Dizzee Rascal and Lupe Fiasco in a studio together?)
milky [email] said at 10:02 AM 04-30-2008: Heard a rip. This is the most awful caterwauling thing I've ever heard, and the biggest disappointment since Shadow's 'The Outside.'
I'm sure this is great music for emo kids and people into the new scene (and who wouldn't appreciate their earlier albums), but there's no appeal for me.
Reg, I respect you album reviews but man...this album sucks! It IS ugly, and not in a cool way.
Shit, Beth Gibbons solo album was more tolerable than this! I would rather they had not recorded under the name "Portishead," so I could jettison this shite with no ill-will.
The drums on this album suck, the sound is fucking pretentious obtuse noise trying to pass itself off as "the new hotness." I never thought I'd say that about Portishead, but that's my review.
reggie [email] said at 11:15 AM 04-30-2008: To quote myself: This album is ugly, it's nasty, it's unpleasant, it's uneven
Milky I'm basing this largely on your response here but I get the feeling you went in expecting it to sound like Portishead. Is that accurate? I pretty much said in my review that was not the case.
Also, I'd heard the first single "Machine Gun" months ago so I knew this album was going to be a huge departure, but honestly you can't possibly have expected them to do anything like their first two albums? They've been down that road already.
milky [email] said at 2:37 PM 04-30-2008: Nasty, unpleasant, uneven... not my idea of album of the year.
Yeah, I was expecting it to sound like Portishead, who did evolve on the second album.
If I wanted to hear cats wailing over fucked up beats, I'd hate to associate that with Portishead...which had two of the hottest, sexual albums you could throw down.
I mean, WTF? Just be Beth Gibbons and the Stooges. It's not Portishead. This like 50 Cent rapping all the vocals on a MC Paul Barman album and saying it's a new MC Paul Barman album.
reggie [email] said at 10:30 PM 05-01-2008: It is Portishead. You're still trying to associate them with a specific sound. I've listened to this album dozens of times now and it is totally Portishead. YOU don't determine what Portishead is, Portishead does. You have to understand, they're much older now and the same things don't interest them now that did when they first started out. In the interviews I've read revolving this album it's very clear that they really hate not merely what they've come to be associated with. Look at the lineup they booked for the ATP Fest they headlined this past Christmas. They booked the bands that they've been diggin recently, and you can hear that influence in this album.
If you want Portishead that sounds like what you apparently think they should sound then pick up a Morcheeba record.
zack [email] said at 7:47 PM 04-30-2008: It would have made no sense for them to put out another album with their old sound, that shit may be rad and all but it's SO DATED sounding. music has changed. trip hop is a silly signifier now.
milky [email] said at 10:28 PM 04-30-2008: Massive Attack was in a similar vein and they still put out respectable releases...something nice on the ears.
'Third' is some atonal stuff for hipsters who have outgrown "the scene" a long time ago, man.
milky [email] said at 2:11 AM 05-02-2008: I liked the simplicity of the 'Danny the Dog' soundtrack when it came out. Still give it a spin every two months or so.
reggie [email] said at 8:45 AM 05-02-2008: 'Third' is for another audience and I'm fine with that. I don't have to like it.
Ha! That's more or less what I was gonna say! I don't believe in trying to convince someone to like something. That said, I at least hope you gave it more than one listen.
brandon [email] said at 9:22 PM 04-30-2008: I'm just going to throw this out there. When Portishead, Portishead came out. I played it. I liked it. I even made sweet, sweet love to many a lass (and at least one lassie - those were interesting times) But, I thought it was kind of cheesy even then. Retro posturings over a cool bed of delicious trip-hop. But in the back of my head, I always thought, this is essentially cheeseball music. I generally think that most bands and most music acts in general have a shelf life. They all have an arc. Most have easier careers to track, because they tend to keep producing regularly over time. They find a voice, elaborate on that voice, and eventually, it just gets boring and repetitious. Occasionally, like Led Zeppelin or Stevie Ray Vaughn, they'll have an early catastrophe, travel down a cul de sac, then recover, but, inevitably, all bands run out of things to say, innovations, novelty, and, essentially, reasons for paying attention to them. I can think of a couple of bands that have done [or have not yet done] what Portishead did take a huge creative/output hiatus, The Breeders, Mission to Burma, Smashing Pumpkins, Guns and Roses, My Bloody Valentine, KRS-One, and it always sucks. Not because it's bad, but because the art has been neglected for so long, that the final product can only be mediocre.
Anyway, put all the animal noises, blips, and atonalities you want in a mix, and the mix, the overall sound is still limited by the scope and talents of the artists. You know, listen to Pablo Honey, then listen to Kid A. They're both Radiohead albums. There's a unity of sound that even neophytes can tune into. Even without the packaging, you could have just been released from some Austrian dungeon after being bred for stock for 34 years, and it would occur to you "These are related sounds" Thom Yorke only has so many tricks in his bag. He can only put a song together in so many ways. Bring in producers, sure, and it's not even a question of listening to the same band anymore. Think of how many bands have, after their primary creative arc was done, handed over the creative reigns to a producer to keep the money flowing in. They start to sound like session players on their own albums.
If I remember correctly, Portishead evolved from a pressure cooked midden of unemployed musicians who were actually desperate, on the dole. Actual starving artists. I don't feel that at all from this album. I feel like it was bred in fashionable, if somewhat threadbare places, by people taking a dim view on their previous art, slogging through a half-remembered process of what it was to wrench joy and spastic music-making out of oppression at the end of the line.
Anyway, that's all, I've now listened a couple of times. It's... interesting. But, I've got to ask why?
reggie [email] said at 10:23 PM 05-01-2008: But, I've got to ask why?
If you're asking "what is the point of Portishead releasing an album ten years later?" the answer is pretty obvious to me. They're older, they're still artists and there had to have been a curiosity amongst all of them as to what type of music they would produce at this stage in their careers. Some, if not all, of them have families now. Their influences have changed. How does that affect them from a creative standpoint?
brandonA [email] said at 1:58 PM 05-02-2008: I never liked it much at all, but I did date a girl that did, and who would always play it (and Morphine) loud to cover up the sex sounds in an overpopulated house.
So today many years later hearing old Portishead does trigger a minor reaction, but not on its own merit.
