Portishead – Third *
(Island Records)

This last week I have found myself with a distinct advantage over the rest of the music blogging community for one significant reason. I have a full-time job (oh snap!), specifically one that involves a ninety mile commute five days a week. The return journey of said commute is at night across glorious rolling Scottish countryside, which is an absolutely perfect environment for listening to new music. Additionally, this job has prevented me from writing about the leaked Portishead album until tonight. Thus, I have had the opportunity to listen to the songs that will almost certainly find their way onto the literally titled Third a great number of times. Driving through rural surroundings in absolute isolation with the air conditioning deliberately low for atmospheric effect, headlights pitching silhouettes across empty fields, these songs have gradually revealed themselves as the miles evaporated beneath the wheels of my car. A lot of folks online seem to have fallen into the trap of writing about this new album without giving the songs enough time to sink in. Furthermore, I get the impression that people have forgotten that mood music exists amidst the multimedia cavalcade of the file-sharing, iPod heavy, fast food instant gratification culture we find ourselves in today. Without being unnecessarily idealistic, this really isn’t an album for broad daylight, snatched listens between lectures or through your Macbook’s tinny speakers. This album demands a certain ambience to be fully digested. A wine drunk night on the futon with good headphones and candlelight. The last train out of the city as dusk sets in. A long drive in the countryside. Use your imagination and you’ll find this album to be particularly rewarding.

Portishead were unquestionably the great British band of the previous decade by some distance. The fashionista contingency of the music press fell over themselves heaping accolades upon the group’s sample-heavy debut in 1994 but were less generous with the self-titled sequel some three years later. Over a decade later, the latter continues to intrigue and fascinate long after the debut fell out of rotation. With Portishead, the trio of Beth Gibbons, Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow demonstrated that they weren’t interested in pandering to critical expectation by blending harsher tones with complex, layered compositions woven from original scores rather than samples. Some eleven years later, Portishead have returned once more with an album that will reward patience and penalise those unwilling to dedicate sufficient energy into deciphering the rich textures within. One might have expected Portishead to mellow somewhat during their extensive hiatus but instead, the group has returned with a far more robust and muscular effort, which is only occasionally reminiscent of their former glory. This time around, Portishead have again turned inwards as a band, working up dense bodies of song from introspective jamming. The result is an album of raucous polyrhythm and dissonant guitar fuzz in addition to the gentle, skittering jazz stylings and decaying electronica that characterised the group’s earlier work. Third is inevitably going to upset those who were expecting an approachable, borderline commercial album and a very good thing too. Instead, this is the sound of a band making music primarily for themselves, regardless of the inevitably gigantic expectations.

Opening track ‘Silence’ in an invigorating introduction to modern day Portishead. Boasting not one but two drum tracks dominating the mix throughout, the band invokes a compressed fusillade of garage rock unlike anything previously attempted. Utley’s guitar effects permeate into a thick, irresolvable haze as Gibbon’s voice hangs in the air. Whereas in the past Portishead were heavily reliant on the interplay between Gibbon’s vocals and Barrow’s turntable effects, both have been pushed into a supporting role. For the most part, Third is the sound of a band, emphasised by the extensive use of live percussion. Barrow’s role is now closer to that of Martin Swope, the original off-stage tape manipulator of Boston band Mission of Burma. On most songs he adds simple electronic crescendos, brief mid-song interludes and supportive keyboard effects. At first it is hard to adjust to Gibbon’s voice in the context of these songs but upon repeated listens, it becomes much more apparent that the singer is servicing the songs for what they are. Gone is the playful torch singer of old, replaced by an austere Nico-esque chanteuse. The exquisitely haunting ‘Hunter’ is a nod to the Baroque, quasi-Lynchian lounge jazz of old and probably the closest Third comes to the classic Portishead sound. ‘Nylon Smile’ reintroduces the percussive racket as instrumental foundation approach of the opening track provoking an unparalleled sense of tension. ‘The Rip’ and ‘Plastic’ demonstrate that Portishead are still masters of dynamic juxtaposition. The former builds from a stark acoustic ditty to an unabashed electro-juggernaut and the latter is a smouldering jazz shanty weathered and beaten by barrages of feedback.

The pseudo-industrial thumping of ‘We Carry On’ is a natural show-stopper, complete with an infectious kraut-rocking outro that pivots on a single trance-like indentation. The naked and folky ‘Deep Water’ is strangely reminiscent of the Velvet Underground with Maureen Tucker on vocals but the static blasts of the aptly-titled ‘Machine Gun’ quickly disperse the momentary calm with amelodic gusto. If there was any doubt that Third was written with the live arena in mind, ‘Small’ should erase such thoughts completely. Shifting from glacial hymn to undulating dub monstrosity in seven glorious minutes, it’s the kind of rollicking climactic number that will have audiences held in hypnotic reverie from start to finish. ‘Magic Doors’ would probably make for a decent enough single if not for Barrow’s deliberately shrill sonic manipulation. Exemplary closer ‘Threads’ allows Utley to showcase his most evocative guitar work, moving from tender Spanish guitar to what could be the sound of two gigantic ships passing each other in the night at high sea. From the disjointed and abrupt cuts found on this leak to the rather flat production, one is left with the distinct impression that the finished article may well be rather different. This is the perfect excuse to pre-order the album and show the band how wonderful it is to have them back. Simply because it is. It’s wonderful.

Tommy Dski