PORTISHEADThird
(Universal)
**** 1/2 (out of 5)
Third, which is the first studio album in 11 years from legendary trip-hop innovators Portishead, features a song called, appropriately enough “We Carry On.” But this is no triumphant “don’t call it a comeback” leadoff track; it’s a dark, driving tune that pops up midway through the album, a repetitive phrase played on a wheezy harmonium accompanied by a sinister quick-march rhythm track. If the songs is about carrying on, it’s in the resigned, post-apocalyptic, Samuel Beckett sense: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
Third is an album where even “Deep Water,” 90 seconds of singer Beth Gibbons accompanied by a ukulele, sounds ominous—Tiny Tim crossed with Trent Reznor, recorded in a fallout shelter. Or a cave, more likely, along with all the other ragged human beings who gathered there after civilization fell apart.
And yet there’s a strange beauty amidst all the dissonance on Third. The jagged, industrial clatter of “Machine Gun” isn’t enough to drown the yearning in Gibbons’ voice, still poignantly straining at the very limits of her upper register. And those loud, swooping tones, like an air-raid siren with the bass cranked up, which close out the album’s final track, “Threads,” manage to sound unearthly yet comforting at the same time—like whalesong. The future may look bleak, but at least it’s still got Portishead in it.
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