Portishead - Three (Album) (From Crewe Guardian)

Portishead - Three (Album)

4:57pm Saturday 12th July 2008 in Reviews By Neil Docking

VAGUE Mexican mumblings seem a rather unusual way to usher in this aptly titled third studio album from Portishead after the band’s 11-year hiatus.

As an undercurrent of rumbling drums roll in beneath sweeping strings on opening track Silence, it is only the familiarity of Beth Gibbon’s haunting vocals that offer the listener any indication they have stumbled upon this reinvention of the trip-hop legends’ celebrated sound.

Lyrically this is an album that dwells on wounded emotions, the suffering of love and the pain of regret. Musically it embraces awkward electronica and sinister pyschedelia.

On the slowly building ballad The Rip, Gibbon’s fragile vocals are stretched to breaking point, while the frantic beats behind We Carry On and the stabbing stataco drum fire of Machine Gun jar against her tender wail.

Perhaps the closest comparison is the evolution of fellow Bristolian’s Massive Attack, whose third release Mezzanine was an equally stark shift in rhythm and ambience.

This is equally brilliant.