Rating 5/5

Has it really been 3 years? Before 'Dummy', melancholy soul over hip hop beats was a rare commodity and coffee tables were for coffee. Now every month brings a mournful chanteuse with a production desk geezer or two in tow, and none of them have surpassed the eerie brillance of that first Portishead album - no wonder they almost split up trying to record the follow-up.

On the strength of 'Portishead", the band have spent the last three years listening to no other music, and I mean that as a compliment. From the first piano notes and hissing breaks of 'Cowboys' you couldn't be listening to anyone else. Instead of looking outwards at current trends, Portishead have turned their gaze in on themselves, probing deeper into what makes them so exquisitely special.

'All Mine', the brassy, tourch song single, is the easiest point of entry. 'Undenied is the only other track that could have been on 'Dummy'. Everywhere else, Geoff Barrow is stretching his sound in all directions. 'Humming' magnifies the strings and spooky 'Mysterons' noise to epic proportions, and 'Elysium' is so stepped in hip hop it could almost be the RZA. But despite Barrow's brilliance, Beth Gibbons' steals the show. At it's most desolate, on 'Half Day Closing' or 'Only You', her pained fragility could make a statue weep, but there's a new fraugt anger, demonstrated on 'Cowboys' and 'Seven Months', that chills to the bone. This time, when her heart breaks you hear it shatter.

So, yes, this album sounds like 'Dummy', but bigger, darker, more majestic, more anguished, more addictive. And utterly magnificent.

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