Portishead
Portishead

THE REVIEW

ABBIATEGRASSO (Mi)
28-12-2004 / 6:35 PM
"Interior. Dim light."

It's like being in Chicago in the '30s, with too much LSD in your system.
It's like being projected onto the needle of an old gramophone.
It's like a phantom orchestra starting to play.
It's like flying back in time with your mind but not with your hands.

A sound that tastes like sugar immediately radiates from the wooden speakers, enveloping the dark room with yellow glue in the corners. The cold outside and the blue winter form a backdrop, sticking as they do behind the window.
Suddenly, there's the fragile voice of Beth Gibbons sneaking intriguingly between the low cushions and the patterns of a drum as dry as ice. Adrian Utley's jazzy guitar does the rest. Few ingredients for a sharp and intense sound, which enchants with its grace and silences the air.
The tracks slide placidly like wood on water; a road unfurling with sinuous curves, the album creates a deep sense of fullness, of dry but satisfying linearity. Never out of tune, always enveloping. And it's the warmth that seduces us. Dense and intense like slow lava, it floods us from beginning to end, throughout all 13 tracks, with "Humming" serving as the keystone in all its beauty.

Too many words cannot be used, as one risks breaking the charm of the incandescent crystal. A historical work by the band from Bristol (Portishead is indeed the neighborhood from which the leader Geoff Barrow hails), laden with that sound that seems to flow spontaneously from there.
Fascinating in every part.