Portishead
Portishead
GO! Beat /London, released 1997
How do you follow up a record that had the same impact on electronic music that Nirvana's Nevermind had on rock? You solidify your arrangements with real instruments and add stronger emotion to your vocals without diluting the spirit that made you so successful in the first place.
It wasn't as simple as that but, after three years of wallowing in bewilderment at the remarkable reaction towards their debut record Dummy, this was the course Portishead charted in creating their self-titled sophomore effort.
Portishead was never going to be a tour de force like Dummy, but three years removed from trip-hop's mainstream birth, Portishead was still a gem of the genre and a bold step forward for the group, if not an extremely innovative one. Ambition and confidence filled the record, much in the same way that despair and despondency filled the aura of Dummy.
From the startlingly expressive opening moments of "Cowboys" and the jazzy arrangement of "All Mine," you realize that Portishead is a band, not a faceless electronic "collective." Producer and unofficial fourth member Dave McDonald is the man responsible for giving Portishead its many shades of Bristol gray. The lush yet harrowing musical textures show that Barrow and Utley have as much prodigious natural talent for writing music as anyone in Britain today.
The star power of Beth Gibbons grows to epic proportions with every bile-flavored lyric she hisses. The growth of the band's sound meant that Gibbons need not shelter her voice as much she had. So while Dummy-like sampled tracks such as "Only You" still define the Portishead sound, a torch song like "Mourning Air" clearly places Gibbons among those few with pure raw vocal talent. As long as that voice can lament, Portishead will forever have a captive audience.