June 5th, 2008
Portishead - Third
Under my radar it slipped until Nick mentioned it recently, the item of conversation of course being Portishead’s “third” (I personally count the live in NYC album which would make Third the fourth album but that is just me) album titled, well, Third.
It has been about a decade since their last release, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, especially seeming the reviews talk about how it doesn’t carry the scratchy, smoky jazz vibe which I enjoyed greatly of Portishead. There was a conflicting notion upon first listening to the album, part of me longed for the old Portishead sound that I loved, another part of me wanted to see them progress, to evolve much like Daft Punk did between Homework and Discovery and like Lamb did with pretty much all of their albums.
My initial listening of the album I must admit yielded a little disappointment, I found myself uncomfortable with the direction the album had taken, but this was solely down to the fact that upon my first listen I was a: expecting not to like it and b: was glossing over it. I was listening to it but I wasn’t actually listening to it. Having played it a few times over I started to hear fragments of the bands past albums weaving in with a sound that was moving away from the past. It’s like a boomerang, thrown out at the beginning with Dummy, the second album was close to the boomerang leaving the hand and the wild arch it takes before returning is akin to the first half of Third, the second half is closer to the old sound of Portishead which signals the boomerang returning to hand.
Time will tell whether this one will stack up with the other 2 albums, I personally feel it is a worth chapter to be placed with Dummy and Portishead. Whether it was worth the 10+ year wait or not remains to be seen however, hopefully we will not have to wait so long for the next album, it’ll be interesting to see where they take things from here.