Portishead - Third
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Free Music Notes for Third
Free Music Review: You're right, it's not trip-hop, it's just excellent music
Hit: 5 Stars
Portishead would like to apologize to their fans for not producing "Dummy 2" or "Portishead 3". Upon reading the 1-star reviews of the angry fans, they have realized their mistake and went back to the studio to record a new album with the same stuff they were doing 10 years ago... Wait, what?! Are you kidding me? If you want something that sounds like their previous albums there is a very simple solution: listen to the previous albums! Musicians evolve and try to create music that they feel is meaningful. Sometimes experimentation works, other times it does not. But for Portishead it has sure done wonders.
I love their first two albums just as much as anyone else. That does not mean though that I have a "Dummy" ruler with which I check if the new album fits the standards. It doesn't, and that's wonderful. The trip-hop is still there, the melancholy is plenty, but the band has also added new stuff to the mix: some alternative atmosphere (no wonder Radiohead did a cover of "The Rip"), some psychedelic undertones (the second half of "Small", reminiscent of early Pink Floyd), some powerful electronic beats (the mighty "Machine Gun", or the menacing "We Carry On"). They're changing dynamics inside the songs and on the album as a whole (just think of the odd pairing of the soothing "Deep Water" and the disturbing "Machine Gun") while at the same time providing a wonderful counterbalance with Beth's eerie voice.
There is a very smooth transition from the first to the last tracks. The first half of the album is a powerful reminder of why we love Portishead in the first place. The second half is a sign of things to come, and why some of us will still love Portishead even if they might sound nothing like in the beginning. Give it some time, come back to it later. It might just not be your album, but there's also a chance that it will start growing on you and then the reward will be tremendous. One morning you'll wake up hooked to the beat of Machine Gun and that will pretty much be it.
Free Music Review: Portishead's 'Third' Act.
Hit: 5 Stars
Following their success with Dummy (1994) and Portishead (1997), Bristol band Portishead went on hiatus from 1999 to 2005, returning briefly in 2006 with a cover contribution ("Un Jour Comme un Autre (Requiem for Anna)") to the highly-recommended Serge Gainsbourg tribute album, Monsieur Gainsbourg: Revisited. All of this is to say that, after seemingly disappearing off the face of the Earth, Third is Portishead's first release in 10 years. The band's lineup remains the same, consisting of instrumentalist-turntablist Geoff Barrow, guitarist Adrian Utley, and vocalist Beth Gibbons, but the band's sound has evolved. (Evolution is a good thing.) Together Barrow, Utley, and Gibbons continue to blend dark, melancholic, down-tempo electronica with hip-hop, jazz and dub to create a unique new sound infused with Gibbons' haunting, disembodied vocals. The sound here is more desolate than before, requiring multiple listens to fully appreciate. (I suspect many Reviewers will initially complain that Third does not live up to the band's earlier work, but subsequent Reviewers will comment on the album's "genius.") "Machine Gun," the album's brilliant first single, the album's fourth track, "The Rip," and the album's seventh track, "We Carry On," pick up exactly where the band left off ten years ago, making this new Portishead album worth the investment. Complete album tracks include:
1. Silence 4:59
2. Hunter 3:57
3. Nylon Smile 3:16
4. The Rip 4:30
5. Plastic 3:27
6. We Carry On 6:27
7. Deep Water 1:30
8. Machine Gun 4:43
9. Small 6:45
10. Magic Doors 3:32
11. Threads 5:47
G. Merritt
Free Music Review: I am still surprised !!! Perfect Album !
Hit: 5 Stars
I have to confess, i bought this cd because i was starting to be intersted on trip-hop, so on internet i've found that their are a trip-hop band.
So i found the cd really cheap in a cd store and when i put it on the cd player i was in shock !
"this is definitely not trip-hop", i do not what kind of musical style is the album cause a lot of people call it "alternative", others call it "kraurock", I just can tell you my experience.
It was really hard for me to digest the complete album thinking that i was not expecting this kind of sound, but when i started to listened it more and more i now i just LOVE IT !!! All the songs are dark,cold and desperate, the voice of the vocalist is really nice, sometimes sweet and sometimes aggresive, just as the melodies of the disc.
It has that "krautrock" or "alernative" songs like SILENCE or my favorites like THE RIP and PLASTIC:
You will find also electronic songs like WE CARRY ON, it is definitely one of the best songs i have heard in all my life !!!! you must listen it !!
And there is another one called MACHINE GUN, really dirty electronic and maddening but really great.
The three last song are SMAL, MAGIG dOORS and THREADS, all of them are really great and sometimes maddening too because of the vocal attempts of the lead singer and some electronic and extra dark sounds.
This is definitely, a must have, one of the best albums i have heard; i can understand that a lot of Portishead fans are dissapointed just because this is not trip-hop or something like that but if you are "oppen mind" you will enjoy this album.
About the booklet, it has no the lyrics sadly and is really really simple, with an strange picture of ...a factory maybe?, is really minimalist the artwork but stil great, i also love it.
Buy it, you will not be dissapointed
Free Music Review: Stick with it, kids..
Hit: 5 Stars
Okay, I pre-ordered this one and was going to review it almost instantly... I'm so very glad I didn't. At first, with the (Portugese?) opening and off-center bass, you realize that there's no way this is going to sound like their previous stuff (in ways both good and potentially bad), but go with it - the more attention you give it, the more you can hear. The way certain songs don't seem to flow into the next one seems to be offset by the way other songs do - almost like a suite of sorts later in the album that seems almost perfectly suited for (no idea if I can say this on Amazon or not, but I'm copying this and re-pasting it just in case I get censored) as music for taking "medicine" to.
Paying attention to the sounds pays off - I swear to (insert deity of choice here) that the first round of percussion on "Machine Gun" sounds in a way softer than the rest of it, on "Small", half of the keyboard (if that's what it is) strokes sound deliberately fudged, "The Rip" is, hands down, one of the most, if not the most beautiful song that they've ever done (I'd press "repeat" 2 or 3 times each time I played the CD when I first got it, and seems, as well, almost tailor-made for a KCRW late morning playlist) and, going back to "Machine Gun", the sounds at the end are bugging me because I can't figure out what obscure late 70's/early 80's movie they remind me of... but in a good way - like there was this movie that I wrote off because I couldn't quite grasp all of the themes at the time I saw it.
I guess that's probably the best analogy for the album in general as well - don't dismiss it and it will grow on you like most albums you end up never wanting to live without.
But then, since both of my boom-generation parents like Portishead, it might be genetic as well.
Free Music Review: Not for Dummies....
Hit: 5 Stars
It seems like a lot of people were expecting Portishead to pick up right where they left off over a decade ago and produce an album which would fit in nicely with their previous offerings. Thankfully, they didn't. Like a lot of people who zealously loved the band over ten years ago, I've grown up and changed. Portishead have done the same. And as this album attests to, they've done a much better job at maturing than I have. The new album is recognizably Portishead thanks, in large part, to Beth Gibbons' distinct voice. The music itself still retains much of the band's earlier style: it's languid, dark and vaguely sinister. However, this album places much more emphasis on eeriness and at times it sometimes seems downright ominous. It also lacks a lot of the pop aesthetic of the earlier albums...you can't really sing along to any of these new songs. But "Third" is a brilliant and complex work with the music swaying from jarring and shrill to uneasy and serene, sometimes within the same track. In many ways, it's the perfect musical accompaniment to the precarious and spastic world we inhabit today. Sure, it would be nice to go back to the era of "Dummy" but those days are long gone. Portishead has realized that and one could theorize that "Third" is their creative reaction to the world of the early 21st century whereas the previous albums were, likewise, reactions to the world of the early 1990s. A lot has happened since. So if you can't bear the thought of the band significantly changing after ten years, then you're probably not going to like this album. But if you can accept that this isn't going to sound like their first two albums, then give it a whirl. It's well worth it.