INWARD-LOOKING PORTISHEAD DIGS DEEPER FOR ORIGINAL IDEAS
Whatever else Portishead may be, it is not a trip-hop band. Despite the Bristol, England-based group's penchant for scratching, funky breakbeats, and samples, Geoff Barrow is quick to distance its music from that label. On the phone from a tour stop in Atlanta, Georgia, Barrow explains that, in England, trip-hop is "seen as a really dirty word". Trip-hop, he says, is a form of instrumental dance music that was developed by DJs in New York, and has nothing to do with the slow, soulful mood music proffered by Portishead. In 1994, at roughly the same time that this nascent genre was taking root in English clubs, a new sound was emerging from Bristol. Portishead released its first album, Dummy, and like-minded artists such as Tricky and Massive Attack were rapidly attracting the attention of the fickle British music press.Somewhere along the way, the signals got crossed, and the Bristol sound was incorrectly slapped with the dreaded label.
"We don't come from dance culture," says Barrow, who plays keyboards and drums in the band. "We've never particularly been into dance culture. But it's so massively huge in Europe, and a lot of the people who were making this so-called trip-hop came from dance culture. They worked in clubs and came out of house music, and slowed stuff down and did all that kind of stuff. For us, we were never about that. It was never about club music. So we always felt completely separated from that."
Whatever the label, Dummy was a remarkable debut. Beth Gibbons' mournful vocals and Adrian Utley's minimal, spy-movie guitar lines were a magic combination. Topped off with tastefully mixed snippets of old jazz records and Mission: Impossible soundtrack albums, songs such as "Sour Times", "Numb", and "Glory Box" seemed to come from the past and the future at the same time. The album sold some two million copies worldwide, and has had a far-reaching influence.
When Barrow began hearing that influence every time he turned on the radio or television, he realized the next Portishead album would have to be different. He says th band's members became "very distrusting of our own sounds" when it came time to record their eponymous sophomore disc.
"What caused a lot of the problems on the second record is that we were hearing the sounds we had used on so many other things. On TV adverts... It seems to be the general mood, you know?" In order to work from a fresh sonic palette, they agreed to a complete moratorium on sampling; Well, almost complete. "There's two really tiny samples on the album" Barrow admits. "And they're more like the icing on the cake, rather than the body of the work on the track, whereas 'Sour Times' was based on a Lalo Schifrin sample, and 'Glory Box' was based on an Isaac Hayes sample."
Barrow acknowledges that the music on Dummy was heavily influenced by what the group's members were listening to at the time - everything from film-noir scores to American hip-hop - but he says that more recently, Portishead has been into, well, Portishead. "In the end, instead of looking outside for inspiration, we just went deeper inside of what we actually do. And that's why it's called Portishead," he says.
For Gibbons, going deeper meant wading into some uncharted emotional waters. The lovelorn victim of Dummy has been joined by a stronger, more vengeful character. When she snarls lines like "The truth is sold/ The deal is done" ("Cowboys") or "Why should I forgive you/After all that I've seen/Quietly whisper/When my heart wants to scream?" ("Seven Months"), the delivery is worthy of Eartha Kitt or Shirley Bassey (the former being best-known for her TV role as Catwoman, the latter for her rendition of "Goldfinger").
"There was a little bit more frustration and anger on this record than the last one, in her vocal style," Barrow says. "I think it's just her finding other places. We were all massively conscious of trying not to go into the same areas again, and do something new and refreshing, rather than Dummy Part 2."
With so much emphasis placed on fresh musical ideas, perhaps lazy critics will quit lumping the band into the currently trendy category of "electronica". Watching electronic artists press buttons and twist knobs can quickly become tiresome, but when Portishead plays live, which it will do Saturday (December 13) at the Rage, it does so as a true band. In concert, the core lineup of Barrow, Gibbons, Utley, and engineer Dave McDonald is joined by keyboardist John Baggot, bassist Jim Barr, and drummer Clive Dreamer. "There's nothing coming from a sequencer," Barrow announces proudly. "I think it's fine for people to use sequencers and everything else, but for us, the people who play with us are incredibly talented, so there's no reason why we should. And we feel like we can change stuff, we can bring stuff up, we can actually give our own emotions into the playing of it."
Ultimately, all these labels, categories, and subcategories are mean-ingless, especially if the music lacks quality and the artist lacks talent or conviction. Happily, Portishead lacks neither. "For us, it's about making music, and trying to be as original as you can," says Barrow. "That's all that matters to us."