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: #367 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

CD 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.

Customer Reviews

You Can Polish A Third.....
Portishead's Dummy was quite an achievement - rarely does a band come from nowhere with their debut and blow people's minds with a truly original sound. The second album, whilst perhaps sounding more 'live' on a few tracks, was essentially more of the same - which is no bad thing when your music is as unique as theirs. But there comes a time when a truly great band must prove their genius by going in a new direction, and somehow succeeding in retaining the vein of quality. Radiohead did it, Bjork did it, and now Portishead have done it - they just did it more emphatically....

Third is an album that took ten years to come. Barrow, Utley and Gibbons have done an admiral thing - they have spent many years cultivating the record, probably writing and rewriting, recording, binning and re-recording, to eventually have an album's worth of songs worthy to appear on a Portishead album. They have also, by the sounds of it, been listening to a LOT of different types of music along the way. Because no matter what people tell you, this is an EXTRAORDINARY record which, with the exception of two songs, sounds nothing like their first two albums.

Of course, Gibbon's voice is unmistakable, and that in itself makes it Portishead. But the way she uses it is different - gone are the melodic choruses from songs like All Mine and Sour Times (believe me, they are melodic compared to THIS album) - instead Gibbons' voice is now used almost as an instrument, another sonic layer, the subtle beauty of which may only hit you after several listens.

As well the vocals, the instrumentation on Third is very different from the previous albums. No scratches this time around, few breaks - instead, very harsh industrial drumming (Machine Gun)and doomy, proggy guitar riffs (Silence). There is even a moment, with stand-out track, The Rip, that you could dance along to in your bedroom, although you might want to paint your walls black first - because Third is one of the darkest albums you're likely to hear this year.

No band that I can think of has created a follow-up album like this - every song is unique, they are all superb, and it is nothing like the earlier albums. Moreover, despite Barrow et al's obvious desire to do something new, Third still feels organic when you listen to it - it isn't the sound of pretention, it's the sound of perfection.

Uneasy listening
Portishead's eponymous second album sounded like they'd spent the years since their debut listening to their own music, and as such, was an often chilling and minimalistic exercise in distillation and refinement. By the same token, it also made any further venture in their distinctive style artistically redundant.

As a result, Third is necessarily a different animal. The sound is at once broader and more claustrophobic. Gone is the scratching and heavy sampling, but still with us (thankfully) is the distinctive and imaginitive percussion work. Dark grooves are rendered uncomfortable listening with the addition of high sustained synth tones. Gibbons's vocals are as ever full of shame, doubt and regret at things she's done or not done, but occasionally a little more upbeat and direct. The album in general is uneasy listening, often beautiful, often noisy, often obtusely changing direction at mid-point or ending suddenly - "Silence", for example, cleverly clips out just as its proggish coda starts to get self-indulgent.

There is even comedy here, too. Yet the ukulele-led (yes really) "Deep Water" is possibly the most disturbing song on the album - hearing Gibbons sing about not being afraid makes one wonder who she's trying to convince, and she comes across as tragically deluded. The song works as a palate-clearer too: the deliciously torturous drumming of "Machine Gun" is all the more punishing for following such whimsy, and its despondent Morricone-esque synth coda is a welcome surprise. "Threads" is a perfect ender, with that enormous, plaintive bass pulse radiating across the landscape like the cry of some wounded Lovecraftian leviathan.

How tempting it would be to set up a lounge ensemble, a Rhodes piano, two turntables and a heap of percussion, stand Beth Gibbons up in front of them and have her wail torch songs until her heart bled. How brave it is, then, that Third is so unlike that concept that it isn't even the opposite of it, it's some kind of unfathomable fourth-dimensional tangent.

An acquired taste
A decade in the making. So, we were expecting big things: and did it deliver?

Mention the name Portishead and you immediately associate the seductively haunting vocals of Beth Gibbons and a mix of music, known as Trip Hop or "The Bristol Sound" and you have 2 albums, both of a similar vein in the form of Dummy and Portishead.

So was Third more of the same?

No, and I'm delighted to say that, as even more repetition would have meant me wasting money on this album. Instead, we were treated to an album which could be compared to marmite itself. Loved by some, hated by others.

This album has gone for absolutely no middle ground whatsoever, almost making it sound as though the team have taken their every whim and put it into this album. At times we are given prog rock (Small), other times a riff that could have come straight out of the BBC Radiophonics Workshop, Pythonesque halting of tracks, and a track which as you listen to first sounds simply bizarre yet fast becomes addictive (Machine Gun). In between this can be found the familiarly haunting voice of Ms Gibbons and the trademark stylistic of the band.

If you are looking for a clone of Dummy (as some fans almost seem to have been hoping for) then you will be sorely disappointed.

It is a new century, and overall Portishead have introduced several new sounds to their repertoire: they are even more raw, edgy, and once you get over the initial surprise of the change, an absolute delight.

On my first listen I wasn't convinced, I thought that they had aimed too much at a niche. On my second it began to grow on me and I realised that it really is a very cleverly written album. Now it is an essential album in my collection.