Portishead Portishead (Go! Beat)
HMMMM . . . Scratched-up noir soundtracks gone strickly dubweiser, anguished torch songs crackling down a phone line from hell . . . Can Portishead, after three years of agonising, finally have completed their follow-up to 1994's epochal Dummy?
The delay, involving much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, was due to a massive identity crisis resolved when the band - singer Beth Gibbons, mastermind Geoff Barrow, guitarist Adrian Utley, techie Dave McDonald - decided to let Portishead be Portishead.
Like all eponymous albums, this is a big Who We Are statement which doesn't so much alter their signature sound as go way, way deeper into their unique sonic and emotional landscape, further into that particular urban nightmare which has little to do with a spurious subgenre called "trip-hop" but is forever theirs and theirs alone.
This is a masterpiece of mystery, imagination and quiet terror: Portishead are the only band who could possibly be approached to score any putative Nineties remake of Godard's Alphaville. Spend an evening with them and who knows what dreams may come?
By: Charles Shaar Murray