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Portishead: "The Rip"

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Portishead: "The Rip"

A decade is a long time to mull over a record, and a long time to wait for one. As fans who'd long given up on hearing anything new from Portishead get their first skeptical listen of the suddenly real Third the reactions are bound to bipolar.

 

There's no way for us to know how many permutations and evolutionary levels these songs have gone through, no signposts to guide us through the new wrinkles in noir songwriting. As far as we know, it emerged directly from Geoff Barrow's forehead clad for battle. "The Rip" doesn't sound like a fighter, especially not at first. The backdrop is gently strummed strings that are more organic than we might have expected from the former sample wranglers.

 

When Beth Gibbons enters, it can't not sound like Portishead though. Her despondant wail continues to be the band's signature element. The pastoral soundtrack here calms her nerves some. She even stays calm throughout a mid-song seismic shift. The warm human playing suddenly morphs into fat retro-futuristic synth tones that are actually pretty inviting themselves.  The repeated lines "...white horses, they  will take me away/ and the tenderness I feel/ will send the dark underneath..." transform from apprehensive daydream to confident assurance with the added rhythmic thrust. On a comeback record full of surprising new facets for the band, the room for a bit of modest optimism is not least among them.

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I was really hoping they'd ditch all the mopey dopey stuff and go with some HiNRG dance shizz. But this is good too. I think the reason why this band was so much better than a lot of bands that sorta sounded like them at the time is because they had a real commitment to songs and song structure. And that seems pretty evident here.

Joey Headset

sliver fox feroshia..

jeff

Not quite doom and gloom, but I can appreciate growth when it is deserving. I eagerly wait for "Third" to drop.

Sainrival

very sweet, stripped down and progressive

/site_media/uploads/images/users/aesthetist/1452791.jpgaesthetist

i once squandered sympathy for the unmarrying foes a despairing future. but after having heard this, i altered, transformed, and relinquished my mesonic interest in apathy, i must say that gratitude takes shape in the form of sullenness. no man can take a dump as large as i can. no man.

toutlemonde

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| LOL
| ... Best prefix comment to date..? I think so.

/site_media/uploads/images/users/Al/batmulletjpg.jpgAl

So it’s official. Prog is back. With a vengeance. The musical landscape has been so bare, so predictable lately that all can say is “we had it coming.”

Every new cycle of the ‘movement’ (and this is the third time it’s gone around in the last 40 years) has its power ballads, its torch songs, its anthems. Venture to say that Portishead ‘The Rip’ will have a place in that pantheon. Furthermore, that it will be placed kicking and screaming next to Renaissance ‘Ashes are Burning’ and This Mortal Coil ‘Song to the Siren’, like it or not (and yes, TMC was really an ‘undercover’ prog project!)

So, you ask, did Portishead created a prog album? Weren’t they headed in the Radiohead post-post-rock direction, trip-hop roots not withstanding? Well, won’t go as far as calling the entire album an exercise in unusual time sigs, but it sure has a lot of it to be purely accidental. They are referencing something in the genre, and want to know what that is. Could it be just Talk Talk (wink wink)?

So is Beth Gibbons really just channeling Annie Haslam? or Elizabeth Fraser? No, don’t think so. But she’s definitely keeping the prog chanteuse torch alit.

http://littlelicker.com/?p=115

LittleLicker

scott loves it, lots and lots of meow.

scott

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