Portishead
Then tape operator Geoff Barrow, pub chanteuse Beth Gibbons and jazz guitarist Adrian Utley formed the group Portishead in 1991, naming themselves after a district of Bristol they’ve since gone to claim to despise. Their first collaborative effort was in fact not primarily a musical one, but rather a dark, dingy espionage film called To Kill A Dead Man. Yet it was to be the accompanying soundtrack that would generate more interest than the moving pictures – Go! Beat Records deciding, off the strength of it, to sign the band of filmmakers up for a record deal.
A wise move both artistically and financially that proved to be, too – the band’s classic debut album Dummy seemingly created a whole new genre (dubbed ‘trip-hop’), went on to sell 150,000 copies in the States before the band even toured there, and ran away with the coveted Mercury Music Prize in the UK.
But as is their style, Portishead didn’t follow it up quickly with something that sounded similar to placate their now massive fanbase. Instead, the trio took three years out, and took a noticeable step away from the ‘trip-hop’ sound with their eponymous second album, released in 1997. The massive orchestral arrangements it featured would be brought to the fore with the release of a live album, Roseland Live NYC, the year after, which documented a spectacular one off performance the band gave with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the Roseland Ballroom.
And then it all went pretty quiet. For seven years.
Sure, the band did solo bits and bobs – most notably singer Beth Gibbons’ much lauded collaboration with Rustin Man – but it wasn’t until 2005 that something resembling Portishead as a band would re-emerge, this time on stage at a Tsunami benefit concert in their hometown of Bristol. A few months later, ‘doodles’ (as the band called them) for what would become their next record started to appear on their MySpace page.
Come 2008, those doodles had become Third, one of the most hotly anticipated albums in recent times. The band preceded it with their curation of the world famous All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, picking an incredibly diverse line up which featured everything from Warp Records guru Aphex Twin to inimitable drone merchants Sunn O))). It offered a glimpse in to how far a departure from their ‘trip-hop’ days the new record would be, and also saw the band give their first full live set in a decade.
PORTISHEAD.CO.UK: Bleak, dark, irregularly updated – the official website mirrors Portishead’s career most aptly.
MYSPACE.COM/PORTISHEADALBUM3: Though they might not have taken to it in a particularly massive way, Portishead’s MySpace is worth checking in on now and again. There’s only the excellent new single ‘Machine Gun’ up there at the minute, but remember, when Portishead came up with a few sketches for Third, they were posted here before anywhere else, with little fanfare.
PHEAD.ORG: The best Portishead fansite out there, this one. It looks great, it’s up to date, there are guitar tabs… god bless geeky fans.
P – A PORTISHEAD FANSITE: Everything that the official site doesn’t do, this one does admirably, and is as thorough as one could hope for (or at least it was, until someone stopped updating it in 2006).
MACHINE GUN + VIRALS: The video to the new Portishead single – one of those rare instances in music when you’ll actually walk around for days humming a drum part to yourself – along with two virals made to accompany the album Third.
LIVE IN WOLVERHAMPTON: “Though it may seem glaringly obvious and more than a little glib to point out the significance of tonight’s final encore being titled ‘We Carry On’, it serves as a sharp reminder that Portishead could just have easily not bothered returning. But they did – and the world’s a better place for it….”
GLORY BOX: LIVE IN NYC
ONLY YOU:
ROADS: LIVE IN NYC
ALL MINE: