•
Rating:
Disconcertment. This is the first impression I got when listening to the new, awaited, and almost unexpected work by the Bristol combo. The credit earned with the seminal "Dummy" in 1994, reaffirmed three years later with the self-titled Portishead even though the photocopy effect was more than evident, was immense and still all to be spent.
Transposing into music a black-and-white film in slow motion. This was the image that the listener got from that melting pot of sounds. The genre was dubbed trip-hop or even the Bristol-sound (in homage to the city belonging to the trio), and the imitators who plundered the genre - ultimately degenerating it into anonymous and detached chill-out music, the kind of entertainment music good for sipping a drink in company or for spending a carefree half-hour of happy hour - are countless.
In 2008, it has to be acknowledged that trip-hop had already rendered its bill, and the Portishead understood this by wiping the slate clean of the previous two works and resetting every space-time coordinate. However, if with "Dummy" the surprise effect and novelty were immediate, as well as an acknowledged masterpiece of the genre, among these grooves it is hard to discern the dawn of a new day. The comparison with the two previous works, besides being blasphemous, seems at least nonsensical.
Rhythms have become robotic, cold, dark, and soulless. Beth Gibbons gives the impression of singing with icy detachment over instrumental bases that do not belong to her. She unravels litanies in many cases detached - not unlike John Cage grappling with "Indeterminacy" - from the instrumental part centered on a sort of futuristic kraut-rock filtered through metallic membranes.
The acclaimed Machine Gun with its hammering metallurgical-style base catapults the listener into an alienating electronic barrage, making the celestial voice of Gibbons, truly more comfortable in retro-melancholic tracks, which formed the backbone of the "Out Of Season" album co-signed in 2002 by Rustin Man (alias Paul Webb, former bassist of Talk Talk), seem alien and out of place. The industrial-dark-wave rhythms practically looped in Plastic and We Carry On increase the sensation of suffocating claustrophobia that one derives as the tracks advance. The Rip and Small with their slow, minimalist progression seduce the listener only to bombard them at the end with an instrumental tail that somehow harks back to some late-sixties psychedelia.
Each track seems to mirror the previous without particular emotions, and when the tones calm down as in the case of Deep Water, it's not quite clear whether that track landed there by chance or if Geoff Barrow pulled out of his hat some old fragment of a forgotten pre-war American b-movie. Frankly inexplicable.
Only at the end of the CD, particularly in the last two tracks, Magic Doors and Threads, do the frosty futuristic tones soften to let, at times, faint hints of the past re-emerge.
In all likelihood, this is neither a one-star work, nor by any means a five-star one, and thinking sensibly, we could trace the truth, as often happens, roughly halfway. With the pieces still moving, it's not easy to give a well-considered judgment, and as usual, we will leave the definitive answer on the goodness of the project to time.
Nostalgically and (I admit) with a bit of a lump in my throat, between the serious and the fairytale-like, I can only say "Once upon a time there were the Portishead..."
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Silence (05:00)
"Esteja alerta para a regra dos três.
O que você dá retornará para você.
Essa lição você tem que aprender.
Você só ganha o que você merece."
Tempted in our minds
Tormented inside lie
Wounded and afraid
Inside my head
Falling through changes
Did you know when you lost?
Did you know when I wanted?
Did you know what I lost?
Do you know what I wanted?
Empty in our hearts
Crying out in silence
Wandered out of reach
Too far to speak
Drifting unable
Did you know when you lost?
Did you know when I wanted?
Did you know what I lost?
Do you know what I wanted?
02 Hunter (03:58)
No one said,
We'd ever know each other.
A new evidence, is what we require,
In this world.
I stand on the edge of a broken sky,
And I'm looking down, don't know why.
And if I should fall, would you hold me?
Would you pass me by?
Ooh, you know I'd ask you for nothing,
Just to wait for a while.
So confused,
My thoughts are taken over.
Unwanted horizons face me instead,
Won't let go.
I stand on the edge of a broken sky,
And I'm looking down, don't know why.
And if I should fall, would you hold me?
Would you pass me by?
Ooh, you know I'd ask you for nothing,
Just to wait for a while.
05 Plastic (03:30)
I wonder why
I don't know what you see?
Of course I care
I won't pretend
It's just I thought
I'd said enough
Don't you know life turns me
Always wants me
I can hold the fight
I could try
But don't know what you hear
'Cause in my heart, you are so clear
It's just I thought
I'd said enough
Don't you know life turns me
Always wants me
I can hold the fight
On your stage
A show that you create
All by yourself
I am nowhere
You never notice
You are so sure
Don't you know life turns me
Always wants me
I can hold the fight
07 Deep Water (01:33)
I'm drifting in deep water
Alone with my self doubting again
I try to not to struggle this time
For I will weather the storm
Gotta remember
Don't fight it
Even if I
Don't like it
Somehow turn me around
No matter how far I drift
Deep waters won't scare me tonight
08 Machine Gun (04:46)
I saw a saviour, a saviour come my way
I thought I'd see it in the cold light of day
But now I realize that I'm only for me
If only I could see (you) return myself to me
And recognize the poison in my heart
There is no other place, no one else I face
The remedy will agree with how I feel
Here am I with plenty, what more can I say?
For I am guilty for the voice that I obey
Too scared to sacrifice the choice chosen for me
If only I could see (you) return myself to me
And recognize the poison in my heart
There is no other place, no one else I face
The remedy to agree with how I feel
10 Magic Doors (03:31)
I can't deny what I've become
I'm just emotionally undone
I can't deny, I can't be someone else
when I have tried to find the words
To describe this sense absurd
Try to resist my thoughts
But I can't lie
I've been losing myself
My desire I can't have
No reason am I for
I can't divide or hide from me
I don't know who I'm meant to be
I guess it's just the person that I am
Often I've dreamt that I don't wait
Enjoy the gift of my mistake
and yet again I'm wrong and I confess
I've been losing myself
My desire I can't have
No reason am I for
11 Threads (05:47)
Better if I could find the words to say
Whenever I take a choice it turns away
I'm worn, tired of my mind
I'm worn out, thinking of why
I'm always so unsure
I battle my thoughts I find I can't explain
I've travelled so far but somehow feel the same
I'm worn, tired of my mind
I'm worn out, thinking of why
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure
I'm worn, tired of my mind
I'm worn out, thinking of why
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure
I am alive when I sleep
Why am I not in all that I got?
I can't find no one to blame
Stand, stand, damned one
Damned one
Damned one
Damned one
I am one
Damned
One
Where do I go?
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By The_dull_flame
"Perhaps the best album by Portishead, certainly already cataloged as one of the best of 2008... eleven years have passed, but it was worth it."
"'The Rip' ... a digital nightmare with the finale of a mournful electric synth that is a real stroke of genius."
By Blackdog
Portishead’s Third disconcerts, and immerses the beloved and iconographic sound of the Bristol trio in dark/industrial waters.
Beth Gibbons’ stunning voice in apnea remains the unmistakable trademark, the unprecedented threads of deus-ex-machina Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley thrust this third memorable work into a distressing and complex environment.
