Third

Portishead

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 29, 2008)
• Original Release Date: April 29, 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Mercury
• ASIN: B0016HNOXQ
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (198 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,341 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk

Portishead's Third has been a long time coming, the result of a lengthy creative torpor following 1997's dark, distinctly underrated album Portishead. Importantly, though, they've shaken it. While the core trio of Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow, and Adrian Utley remains, this is quite a different band to Portishead's 90s incarnation: gone is the slo-mo turntable scratching and smoky jazz feel, replaced by heavy, brooding rhythms, vintage-sounding electronics, and spindly guitar. Still present, though, is that sense of emotional fracture and deep gloom. "Silence" opens with a dense drum loop which suddenly falls away to reveal Gibbons' voice, cold but magnificent: "Wounded and afraid, inside my head/Falling through changes". "Nylon Smile", meanwhile, is a fine example of Third's occasional folksy edge, an acoustic song reminiscent of Leonard Cohen that, around its midpoint, lifts off on a propulsive electronic rhythm, Gibbons holding one clear, hard note as synthesisers bubble beneath. At times, it's a harsh and foreboding listen: the electronic drums of "Machine Gun" might put off the listener hoping for smooth dinner party fare. But Third is a brave and forward-thinking return, and one great enough to justify its lengthy gestation. --Louis Pattison

About the Artist

Portishead are a band from Bristol, England, named after the nearby town of the same name, 12 miles (19 km) west of Bristol.

History

The band was formed in Bristol, UK in 1991, by Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and Adrian Utley. After releasing a short film (To Kill a Dead Man) and its accompanying music, Portishead signed a record deal with Go! Beat Records.

Dummy (1994)

Portishead's first album, Dummy, was released in 1994 and the first single was 'Numb'. In spite of the band's aversion to press coverage, the album was successful in both Europe and the United States (where it sold more than 150,000 copies even before the band toured there). Dummy spawned two hit singles, "Glory Box" and "Sour Times", and went on to win the prestigious Mercury Music Prize in 1995.

Portishead (1997)

After their initial success, Portishead withdrew from the spotlight for three years until their second album, Portishead, was released in 1997. The album's sound differed from Dummy, the main differences being that much of the music was composed and played by the band, not sampled from records, and had a grainy, harsher sound. Three singles, "Cowboys", "Over" and "All Mine" were released, the latter achieving a Top 10 placing in the UK.

Roseland NYC Live (1998)

In 1997, the band performed a one-off show with strings at the New York Philharmonic orchestra at Roseland Ballroom in New York. A live album primarily featuring these new orchestral arrangements of the group's songs was released in 1998. There was also a long-form VHS video of the performance, and a DVD followed in 2002, with substantial extra material including many early videos.

Hiatus (1999-2007)

For the next few years, the band members concentrated on solo and other pursuits, until in February 2005, the band appeared live for the first time in seven years at the Tsunami Benefit Concert in Bristol. Around that time Barrow revealed that the band was in the process of writing its third album. In August 2006, the band posted two new tracks on its MySpace page--described by Barrow as "doodles". Around the same time, Portishead covered Serge Gainsbourg's "Un Jour Comme un Autre (Requiem for Anna)" on the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited.

Return

On October 2, 2007, Portishead stated that the new album, titled Third, had been mixed and was nearly complete, and was due for release in April 2008. On December 7-9, 2007, the band curated the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, England. The festival featured their first full live sets in nearly 10 years. They premiered five tracks from the new album, provisionally titled "Wicca", "Hunter", "Machine Gun", "Mystic" and "Peaches".

Third (2008)

Third is due for release on April 28, 2008. The band announced: "The album has 11 tracks and is 49 minutes 13 seconds long", and the track titles have been disclosed.On January 21, 2008, a European tour to support the album was announced, together with a headline spot at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 26, 2008. As well as their main recorded output, Portishead have been involved in a large amount of remixes and collaborations with other artists.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

208 of 240 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Third, April 29, 2008

By	Mike Newmark (Tarzana, CA United States) - See all my reviews

"We really wanted to sound like ourselves but not sound like ourselves. It was always going to be difficult." - Geoff Barrow, Pitchfork Media interview, Apr. 7, 2008.

Geoff Barrow and the rest of Portishead had every reason in the world to feel this way. When Dummy debuted in 1994, it didn't sound like anything else and wasn't even expected to sell 50,000 copies. It's hard to believe in this day and age, but Dummy's dark, torchy pop punctuated with hip-hop beats and swimming in a sea of bass had never before been co-opted by anyone--not even Massive Attack, who had approached trip-hop from more of a dance perspective. It blew up, sparking a trip-hop genesis in alt-rock circles looking for a viable (and similarly angst-ridden) alternative to grunge, especially in the States. Now, of course, Dummy's sound is everywhere, from the umpteen upstart trip-hop bands that subsequently appeared to spy films, cocktail parties and massage therapy commercials. So we would be forgiven for not being bowled over by Dummy today, and Portishead would be forgiven for wanting to distance themselves from it.

When last we heard from Portishead, it seemed as though they were packing it in for good, leaving us with a slightly less fresh self-titled album in 1997 and a live recording at Manhattan's Roseland Ballroom in 1998 before retreating into the shadows. Always something of an enigma and quite shy of the press, it was left to us to assume that Portishead was frustrated with how their crown jewel had been assimilated and watered-down, and that they were too daunted by the challenge that Barrow mentioned above to record a third album: How do you sound like yourself and not sound like yourself? All of which makes Third--a record that wasn't even supposed to exist--such a cryptically dazzling triumph. Third is no Dummy: It's much bleaker, makes precious few references to pop, and attains a level of creepiness that Dummy's strangest song, "Wandering Star," only suggested. Yet one listen to Third is all it takes to realize that nobody else is making music quite like this, and this is how Portishead still sound like themselves. In fact, hearing Third in 2008 may clue us into what it was like to hear Dummy in 1994.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, the first thing to do when approaching Third is to forget about trip-hop and all the associations it carries. Barrow's drums stay far, far away from a hip-hop swagger; rather than providing a backbone, these diverse rhythms teeter on edge with the rest of the music and add another ominous layer to the mix. "Plastic" uses amped, clipped drum rolls that send the song screeching to a halt about a dozen times, and "We Carry On" is driven by a scary tom-led tribal stomp (Morcheeba this isn't). Barrow doesn't cop out by adding bassy undercurrents for cheap mystery; instead, he punches up the compression and keeps the sound trebly and brittle, giving the impression that everything is flying right at you even when the songs stand still. Third may be stubbornly unsexy, but that doesn't mean it's not alluring. Indeed, it wields an odd magnetic power that draws the listener ever further into its disorienting abyss, even when all of the elements jump bluntly out of the speakers.

By the same token, Third's allure doesn't make it an easy listen, and it can be particularly heady when experienced in one straight pass. The sequencing feels all wrong, moving up and down and up again in the most unsettling of ways. After the distorted anti-song "Silence" kicks the record off, Portishead dips into the heavily narcotized haunted house of "Hunter," where Beth Gibbons' vocals drift sleepily and hypnotically through the arrangement. "We Carry On" is followed by the 90-second respite "Deep Water," which sounds like Gibbons fronting the Ink Spots over a ukulele melody, before being gunned down by the incessant staccato rapid-firing of "Machine Gun." Through it all, Gibbons sings like an innocent bystander; divorced from and frightened by the music around her, she becomes our stand-in for its unfamiliar territory. She contributes little to the record compositionally and melodically, but remove her and obliterate a sizable chunk of Third's emotional punch.

The members of Portishead are noted experimentalists, but they don't just make cool sounds for fun. The backward-looped guitar on "Nylon Smile," the warped ascending scales on "Hunter," and the many other weird noises that crop up on Third contain an element of caution like aural barbed wire: As unpleasant as they may be, they're there to keep us from venturing somewhere truly dangerous. The creepy Portuguese television program that begins "Silence" seems appropriate, since listening to Third can feel as though we're tuning into a channel that we're not meant to know about or watch. I imagine that trip-hop in its nascent form--Massive Attack's Mezzanine, Tricky's Maxinquaye, and yes, Portishead's Dummy--was originally meant to invoke this sort of forbidden underworld, but that somewhere down the road the plot got lost, and its darkness and foreboding turned into something more manageable, fashionable and marketable. By rescuing trip-hop from a fate of Banana Republic soundtracks and putting their extremely personal stamp on a tired genre, Portishead have re-established themselves not simply as masters of their craft, but as reinventors of it.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You will enjoy this album if you get over trip hop., May 12, 2008

By	Nam Pho (jersey city, nj) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I really love this new portishead. I am kind of glad that it took them more than 10 years to put out this album. If it were to come out any earlier, I would probably hated it simply because its not trip hop. You know that sound: hip hop beats, lush/cinematic string arrangement, turntable scratches, old film score samples. That was the sound that most people love but that sound have reached it peak in 1998. This is now, portishead have moved on and they offer something new that is really good. Its not a difficult album at all if you give it a listen. The album is melodic, beth still have a great voice and some songs I find a certain groove to them. The album is dark but its catchy. They are still an interesting band. Leave trip hop back in '98 and enjoy portishead now.

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NO "DUMMY"..., May 9, 2008

By	F. M. Moses "insultant1" (Blacklick, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

...I've waited a good solid week of listening to the new Portishead "Third" before diving into the review. That's to say, its been almost a non-stop solid listen for me...while I'm finding it be a rather difficult task to eject from the CD player...hasn't been since the release of Radiohead's "Kida" that I've found anything quite as artistically embracing and sensually orgasmic as "Third."

Nah! "Third" is no "Dummy" nor it is a replication of the self-titled release...this is a band that is too intellect to do the same thing twice and too far removed from the media to give a toss, as admitted by Geoff Barrow in a recent SG interview. For those who were expecting a "dance" album--toss that one out!!!

No, Portishead is not a dance-music making band! As "Dummy" might have helped to define "trip-hop"--it had its gleeful soulful moments, enriched with periodically sampling. Happy music?!? When has Portishead ever put out a bouncy Celion Dion whimsy of inspirational "white" fluff for the masses?

But, it's not all about the gloom on "Third," as the seductive-pulp sounding ballad "Hunter" sedates the listener with the lines: "...and if should fall will you hold me? Will you pass me?"--a brilliant love song. Likewise, "Nylon Smile" carries on writing the same sweet-heart letter that cries: "I don't know what I've done to deserve you/and don't know what I'll do without you..." "The Rip" on the other hand is a rather vibrant colorful mellow humming, creating a visual sensation like staring into a kaleidescope and slowly turning the dial as the tempo gradually glides into a colorful rose-pedal of colors--perhaps the most "upbeat" blissful moment of the album.

"Third" is by far the most studio-experimental release that Portishead has created YET. "Machine Gun" splices two electronic drums together, creating a fired-ammunition trigger-happy effect. "Plastic" is a hard-grinding mix, recalling the claustrophobic thump of "Elysium, with a choppier, looser feel with its quick surged-cuts. "Silence" is fast-drive raid of panic nightmare rage--the song is cut just before it fades (classic!).

Removing themselves from the electronica dark-wave feel of the previous two studio albums, on "Third," the band introduces its first few acoustic guitar intros on "the Rip" and "Small," while "Deep Water" stands naked of any electronic effects with its barber-shop croon.

Both "Small" and "Threads" are the climax gems of "Third." "Small" begins as an angelic melody layered with Beth Gibbon's ethereal ice-breaking vocals which suddenly morphs into a spiraling swerve of galactic swaying guitars and early Pink-Floyd-like thumping organs. "Threads" is the most haunting of any of delicate delights featured on this 49 minute-long orgasm with its droning hallow-sound guitar riff accompanied with the constant high-pitch "squeal" in the back ground, induced by the chill of hypno-voodoo beats--producing a entangling effect of euphoria. The song ends like a heavy moan of a Tibetan chant and slowly fades--what a brilliant place for the last song!

No, "Third" is not a dance album, it's not another "Dummy," nor it is all "happy"--it's the avante-garde masterpiece of the 2000's. On "Third" Portishead is solid proof that the band is less about producing music and more about creating the art. Ten years was well worth the wait for this magnificent stereophonic high!