A Return to Dissonance: Portishead's Third
Time warps all, even memory. Fond recollections accumulate a kind of shimmering sheen that smooths out the less velvety moments of discord that might have accompanied those joyous moments. You might be wondering what this has to do with Third, Portishead's first new album of original material in over a decade. Well, a lot really. You see, my initial impression of this eagerly anticipated record was less than fond and far from joyous. Upon my first round of the album's eleven tracks, I was left feeling numb and bereft of hope. Portishead was never a particularly sunny group, but I, for one, took great solace in their jazzy, scratchy, downbeat reflections on loss, longing, and loneliness. Alas, try as I might, Third almost succeeded in denying me such comforts. The album was like an open challenge, daring me to uncover the harmony I was almost certain lay somewhere beneath its atonal depths. So I played it again and was pleasantly reminded that despite my initial horror, there were also plenty of moments that made it worth another listen. I'll try to keep the track reviews brief, because it's the overall oeuvre of the album that I wish to explore.
“Silence” starts with a moody, incomprehensible (at least for my mono-linguistic ass) sample that's soon accompanied by a grooving lounge melody, only to become obliterated by a stuttering, lurching beat. This just might be one of the hardest opening tracks in memory. It's also an accurate reflection of the harrowing soundscapes that follow.
“Hunter” — which brought back a bit of the dry starkness of Dummy, interspersed with fuzz-guitar licks — was just a warm up for “Nylon Smile.” The warp and woof of its sinuous distortions quickly wove their way into my head. Its followup, “The Rip” was also another among the few radio friendly tunes on hand. The track's steady, low-fi feel almost made me think of Air, or “Dry The Rain” by The Beta Band.
“Plastic” signifies the end of easy hooks and seductive melodies as the sound of an approaching chopper quickly closes the distance into the forefront, only to get broken up by a vortex of wailing distortion. It took a while, but it eventually grew on me.
“We Carry On,” seems to have a particularly misleading title among an LP full of odd names, because it starts off with a wailing klaxon beat, interspersed by honking horns that evoke a gridlocked highway on a hot day.
“Deep Water” provides a painfully brief respite from the harshness of the surrounding tracks. Listening to Beth's delicate voice bob over its easy, ukulele rhythm, conjured images of Hurley in Lost, or Tom Hanks floating atop his luggage in Joe Versus the Volcano. Simple soothing perfection.
“Machine Gun” bludgeons you to attention with a fuzz-beat rat-ta-tat sample that never lets up. The violence is further enhanced by coiling windups that give way to electro charged bass lines that close it down into a dead silence that segues into “Small.” The track starts slowly, as if to let the listener recover from the previous barrage. Its music echoes tenuously — stretching in accordance with Beth Gibbon's whispering vocals — then gradually bristles with psychedelic guitars that recall Jefferson Airplane. Once the beat kicks in, Beth croons like a temple priestess, dazed and entranced by an idol of sound.
“Magic Doors,” has a syncopated beat backed by licking cowbells. The end is nigh and this song shimmers with flourishes of a horn trying to break free of the darkness, but these bits don't last long, and the song stutters and fades amidst late-night strings that transport the listener into “Threads.” This lament of regret and uncertainty continues the Portishead tradition of ending their albums with a mellow, contemplative closer, but unlike its predecessors, “Threads” does not go gently into the night. It carries on and wails in fits and starts until silence claims it at last.
Third is a good album, but it runs the risk of being overshadowed by its flaws, and as much as it pains me to say it, Beth Gibbon's vocals are chief among them. In the past, her voice was but one part of the greater whole of the music, but on Third, she seems to be fighting, often futilely, against the overpowering tide of the instrumentals — with occasionally screeching results. Which brings me to Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow: the other two members and chief architects of the band. One of the things that set Portishead apart from their many knockoffs was the delicate balance they maintained on their records. Their blend of sampling, old fashioned musicianship, and studio wizardry was subtle, nuanced, and never boring, but after ten years on the bench, they've finally succumbed to samplitis: that is, an over reliance on repetitive samples and easy hooks. Ironic, considering that, in their attempt to avoid repeating their former — now familiar — sound, almost nothing about this album is easy. It starts and stops through a disorienting, chaotic array that made me cold; and, more than a little bit nauseous.
Overall, Third is a bold, if sometimes brutal, melding of Portishead's first two albums with low-fi pop, psychedelic rock, and the classic spy-thriller touches that became the band's signature. The result is not always pleasant, but when it works, one is reminded of what made the group so special in the first place.
My arrival to this conclusion came after a post-Third re-listen of Portishead's breakthrough masterpiece, Dummy. Through it, I truly saw the connection between albums one and three. Adrian Utley's assertion that all of their records were “strange” was — to my disbelief — correct; because, as Dummy's muggy, sonorous beats reverbed through my walls, I suddenly recalled all those hours I'd spent back in '95 trying to adjust my graphic equalizer to make it sound less cacophonous and more “punchy.” It wasn't until some time later that I finally gave up and came to understand that Dummy sounded exactly the way it was supposed to. Its minimal, claustrophobic construction was meant to make one stew and brood. And brood I did; for so long, I eventually forgot my initial breaking-in period with this band and their music. Hearing Dummy again was like taking a remedial history lesson that put Third in a context I could appreciate. The third time may not be the charm, but it's good to have Portishead back.