Product Description

Imaginatively-titled third studio album from illustrious Bristolians whose 1994 debut "Dummy" broke trip-hop all over the world with its artful, haunting and melancholy fusion of torch song, sinister atmospherics and slowed-down hip-hop beats. Coming a full ten years after their last album, the live document 'PNYC', this record sees them going back to the source, digging in the crates for weird and wonderful samplesfrom prog rock, free jazz, techno, industrial and funk on which to work their twisted magic, as well as incorporating some of the folk influence that pervades frontwoman Beth Gibbons' solo work.

Track Listing

1. Silence
2. Hunter
3. Nylon Smile
4. The Rip
5. Plastic
6. We Carry On
7. Deep Water
8. Machine Gun
9. Small
10. Magic Doors
11. Threads

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243 in Music
• Released on: 2008-04-28
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 49 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Portishead's Third has been a long time coming, the result of a lengthy creative topor 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

Customer Reviews

Amazing
Look, if you've given this album a poor review then stop, put on a good pair of headphones, and listen to this album properly without skipping tracks. Quite frankly this is the most moving thing I've heard for a long time.

Awful Awful Awful.
As you might guess from the title, I don't like this one bit. Loved their first two albums, and the live in New York CD, and have been waiting for this third album for years. But it is awful to the point where I can't listen to it. It's like Eric Morecambe said - all the notes are there, but not necessarily in the right order. It gives me a headache every time I turn it on. What were you thinking Beth? Look out my copy on Amazon Marketplace! Erm, it's brilliant, you must buy it...

The gap between releases shows....
We all know and love 'Dummy' and even quite liked the difficult second self-titled album but then we had to wait a long time for the 'Third' to show up - and I think that's it's problem.

Any good band should progress over time and change their sound and Portishead have obviously done so in the years they have been away. Trouble is, we were all expecting something Dummy-esque from Third but having missed out on the evolution got an album which is pretty far from it.

Some of the tracks are very hard to listen to (Machine Gun being the worst), others are fairly non-offensive yet ordinary and one or two are real gems and I wish they lasted a bit longer.

I think that if I had heard the evolution from 'Portishead' to 'Third' I'd be more forgiving but this is so different (and hence I am so disappointed by it) that I can only give it 2 stars and hope that the next album is not quite so far away, either in time or sound.