The Bristolian band Portishead have released three great albums - Dummy and their self-titled are both seen as key releases in "trip-hop" and, the former especially, are celebrated to this day. Their third album, aptly named Third and with a rather simplistic cover that reveals little of what is to come, is a brilliant album too - one that's more experimental as it shifts between songs that slowly crescendo into something stunning and abrasive tracks seamlessly.
The album starts with a radio sample on Silence, before a cello, the pulsating drumming by Geoff Barrow, and Adrian Utley's guitar creates a spectacular opener, only improved by Beth Gibbons' plaintive vocals that enter halfway through, before halting abruptly into the gloomy Hunter. From the offset, the album sounds almost like the soundtrack to a dystopia, sounding frantic yet subdued at the same time.
The album can jump from tracks such as Nylon Smile to The Rip with no song feeling out of place, with the tracks instead feeling like stops along a journey, one guided by Gibbons' powerful singing and the synths that both flicker and drone throughout, such as on Plastic, which goes from mellow to harsh within a matter of moments whilst the same "flapping" sound repeats throughout. You then have the chaotic We Carry On, Gibbons' vocals now fragmented whilst synths and Barrow's drumming turn the song into something of an alarm, before Utley's guitar tears through the anxiety of the song before the pulse promptly resumes. It is perhaps the best song so far on the album, which is saying something as there have been no downsides so far - and there won't be any on the next five songs.
Deep Water is about as not-Portishead as you can get, led by a ukulele that manages to stay sorrowful at the same time, before the industrial repetition in Machine Gun kicks in - the drum machine doesn't change much throughout - only to become more dissonant - possibly sounding the most like an apocalypse would out of all the songs. It's only the drum machine and Gibbons for most of the song, and it's stunning to listen to - certainly one of my favourites, and the one I return to the most when listening to Portishead in general.
Small is similar in its sparse instrumentation, Gibbons' vocals and lyrics already making the song beautiful, yet the drumming and synths kick in after two minutes and it only gets better from there, especially as the guitar assists in a brilliant ending. Immediately after is Magic Doors, a song that is built on a hurdy-gurdy, piano and cowbell which further highlights how out there this album can get whilst also accessible, and which progresses into Threads, the album closer, with a hanging note that remains persistent throughout the slow-paced track that only builds through brilliant drumming as well as Gibbons' impassioned vocals before fading as a guitar comes in to act as a final harrowing echo that reverberates for the final minute.
The guitar fades out and...that's it. The end to possibly one of the most disparate albums by how each song sounds, yet you couldn't really omit any song - they're all great by their own merit. This is definitely an album you should listen to and if I was able to pin blogposts, I'd pin this review to my blog. Listen to this album at some point.
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