So I like Third, the latest album. Deep down I was hoping that the leaked tracks that began popping up where some b-sides or something. But, alas, it is what it is. It's different, yet unmistakenly Portishead. The dirge, eerie instrumentation and catchy melodies. But instead of Geoff Barrow's neck-snapping hip-hop beats, we get uhhh... I don't know what to call it. It definitely ain't "trip-hop" (a term I'm glad is dead). This is Portishead for the arena. Not for the headphones.
It's been about the only thing I've listened to this week. There's plenty of oddities on the record, distractions, blips and just general weirdness. "We Carry On" is the first Portishead song I don't like. Yay! Now that's out of the way, on the technical side I have a problem with the engineering quality of the whole record. (Do you hear the difference in clarity and crispness between "Machine Gun" and everything else?) I've heard bedroom recordings with better engineering. This sounds like it was recorded on cassette tape off a.m. radio.
But I give Portishead the benefit of the doubt. I trust my ears to the band that gave us such beauties as "Roads" and "Glory Box" and "Over" and "Undenied" and ... heck every song on their first two records. "Threads," from their latest, sounded completely atonal to me initially, but now I find it the most ambitions song on the record. Plus, Beth Gibbons really lets loose on the track, shaking free of the Billy Holiday stylings of the first two records. And "The Rip" is my favorite song at the moment.
Third certainly is no Dummy or Portishead (or Out of Season, Gibbons' and Adrian Utley's collabo with Rustin Man). Those albums, plus their live record and DVD, are just a mouse click away, though. Interestingly, I read an interview in which Barrow says that he initially started making the record in the hip-hop mold of the first two. But that he didn't want it to sound like Gibbons just singing over DJ Premier beats. Two albums of that was enough, I guess. So I'm left to hope that a remix of this record exists somewhere, one with those sick-ass Portishead beats. And that it won't take 10 more years for it to surface.
It's been about the only thing I've listened to this week. There's plenty of oddities on the record, distractions, blips and just general weirdness. "We Carry On" is the first Portishead song I don't like. Yay! Now that's out of the way, on the technical side I have a problem with the engineering quality of the whole record. (Do you hear the difference in clarity and crispness between "Machine Gun" and everything else?) I've heard bedroom recordings with better engineering. This sounds like it was recorded on cassette tape off a.m. radio.
But I give Portishead the benefit of the doubt. I trust my ears to the band that gave us such beauties as "Roads" and "Glory Box" and "Over" and "Undenied" and ... heck every song on their first two records. "Threads," from their latest, sounded completely atonal to me initially, but now I find it the most ambitions song on the record. Plus, Beth Gibbons really lets loose on the track, shaking free of the Billy Holiday stylings of the first two records. And "The Rip" is my favorite song at the moment.
Third certainly is no Dummy or Portishead (or Out of Season, Gibbons' and Adrian Utley's collabo with Rustin Man). Those albums, plus their live record and DVD, are just a mouse click away, though. Interestingly, I read an interview in which Barrow says that he initially started making the record in the hip-hop mold of the first two. But that he didn't want it to sound like Gibbons just singing over DJ Premier beats. Two albums of that was enough, I guess. So I'm left to hope that a remix of this record exists somewhere, one with those sick-ass Portishead beats. And that it won't take 10 more years for it to surface.
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