Portishead - Third (Universal)

Well they certainly haven’t spent the last decade mulling over potential album titles. Portishead return with their third album – ‘Third’ – after a ten year hiatus which may or may not have been self-induced as a public palate cleansing tactic following the phenomenal genre-defining success of their debut LP ‘Dummy’. Their 1999 follow-up ‘Portishead’ was inevitably crushed under the weight of such expectation and so breathing space was perhaps a creative necessity. Which is ironic because ‘Third’ is at times the most claustrophobic album you’ll come across this year. Lead single ‘Machine Gun’ pitches you into an industrial dystopia of shuddering, piston-like drum-loops and Blade Runner-esque synths that systematically oppress and crush Beth Gibbons’ ethereal vocals, while ‘Magic Doors’ use of dissonance induces a sense of paranoia that Bernard Hermann would have been proud of. Such instances certainly have a provocative merit, consciously distancing themselves away from the tried and triumphant techniques of Dummy’s slinky, smoky trip-hop but in doing so they unbalance the beautifully poised combination of Gibbon’s supernatural voice and the dark, brooding, sounds behind it that is their trademark. However, with highlights such as ‘Hunter’, ‘Threads’ and particularly the haunting ‘The Rip’, where an initially folkish, bucolic guitar progresses into rolling, Ladytron-esque electronica, Portishead exhibit a capacity to seamlessly evolve their sound into new, but equally thrilling, territories.

ROBERT DAVINSON