Music : Third

Rating: - lifeless and dull
Loved Portishead since they released their first album , but this new release, after an 11 year wait, is the biggest disappointment I've heard. You can say they're being "experimental" not relying on tried and tested sounds but this album sounds cheaply and quickly produced. I've heard better productions on home demoes on Myspace and there are thousands of them out there. The sounds are the mainstay of bad electronica easy to produce on synthesisers but " it gives that cold, disjointed ,disillusioned with life etc etc" yeah yeah! getting a good sound on an analogue synth can be difficult ,I know I own two. Listen to Skinny Puppy and you can hear dystopia and they make it sound amazing . Listening to them in the 80's and you be amazed how fresh it sounds.They still sound amazing today and don't wait 11 years to make an album.
Third's songs are dull never minding the sound. They are like listening to a constant whinge. NME probably loved it but to me it sounds like a band having to produce product quickly or the record company will drop them them because they have been doing bugger all for over a decade!

---

Rating: - Fantastic, and gutted when it finishes...
I think this is a fantastic album. It does take some hard listening but on a few track, get your foot tapping and it won't stop, and then when the track finishes, you feel disappointed. Yes, a couple of tracks aren't to my tastes and it does have a specific audience thanks to the dark tunes and beats. When the CD finishes, it leaves you feeling that it should be 3 hours longer. It is truly a great CD.

---

Rating: - A deliciously dark grower
I've read a lot of reviews that have dismissed Portishead's Third for being too dark - let's just get one thing out of the way first: it's supposed to be.

If you don't like dark, dreary, 'I'd slash my wrists if I wasn't so busy playing an instrument' music, then stay away from this. And also, be prepared to invest some serious time on it. You're not just going to fall head over heels in love with it instantly.

For me, that's where the album's strength lies - every time I listen, it gets better and better. I won't lie - when I first heard Machine Gun, I was bitterly disappointed. I only kept listening to it to show people Portishead's terrible new effort, and after the third or fourth listen, I found myself loving it. The rest of the album firmly follows suit.

Good on you, Portishead, for tryin something so different - it took a lot of balls to abandon the sound of the first two albums, and it pays off in bucketloads.

---

Rating: - Third time unlucky? (7/10)
Almost every review of Portishead's Third opens with a summary account of trip hop, with mentions of coffee tables and dinner parties. Musical snobbery conspires to dictate who listens to music and how it is listened to. The fact that Dummy became universally successful or featured in the soundtrack for This Life, for example, should not detract from the fact it was a great album, no matter who listened to it. Certainly, when `Dummy' was first released in the UK in 1994 it was startlingly original and the fact that the likes of Morcheeba and Moloko imitated their sound (superficially, I might add) shouldn't cloud our appraisal of that classic nearly 15 years on.

So maligned is the genre of Trip Hop that the true innovators of the scene, especially in the Bristol area, have often been unfairly grouped with those simply riding the bandwagon. Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and co. seem likewise desperate to distance themselves from mainstream appeal and `Third' sees them move further down a path of uncompromising gloom and claustrophobic atmospherics begun on their self-titled second LP ten years ago.

While much has been made of Third's more esoteric approach to absorbing new influences - there are no hip hop scratches on this album, and no stylised Eartha Kit vocal contortions from Gibbons, no John Barry/James Bond torch songs - the global Portishead mood hasn't changed radically. We are still in a bleak, industrial coastal town, and Gibbons is still a lovelorn obsessive, her depth of feeling seemingly bordering on the psychotic.

`Third' sees Barrow marry an austere range of antiquated keyboards and Teutonic drum machines to spidery prog-rock guitars. These absrasive textures rememble those employed by Broadcast but are used in a wholly different way. While Broadcast often assemble these metallic, vintage electronics to create something with a retro pop sensibility, Portishead are more concerned with bleak, industrial moods. The entire record seems to be recorded in sparse analogue, and I spent the first couple of listens fiddling with the bass and trebble settings, in vain.

There are few moments of levity on an oppressive and lengthy album, bar the brief barbershop-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea ditty `Deep Water'. For me, this is what stops `Third' becoming a truly great album - its relentlessly oppressive mood. Furthermore, while the sonic landscape is more expansive - song times run into six minutes, and have more freeform, jazzier structures than before - Gibbons' songwriting isn't as sharp as on previous recordings. As a fan of her stunning solo effort with Rustin' Man Paul Webb, `Out of Season', I think the songs on `Third' don't quite match the peak of her talents.

While much of the album is growing on me after initial disappointment, I doubt I'll ever want to listen to the dirge-like melodrama of the closer `Threads' or the prolonged misery of `Small', which is akin to watching an Ingma Bergman film on a rainy day, after a funeral. However, the likes of `Silence', `Hunter' and `The Rip' are starting to burn indeliably on my mind. If you like this, you might like Broadcast's `Ha Ha Sound' or Radiohead's `Amnesiac'.

---

Rating: - Disapointed doesn't cover it
I bought this cd because I saw a 5 star review for it in a magazine and thought I couldn't go far wrong. I was surprised, therefore, how quickly my mind turned to suicidal thoughts after a few moments of this dreary, pretentious rubbish. I can tell they're trying hard to be moody, atmospheric and edgy which I suppose they manage to do, but i would not recommenD this to anyone who likes to listen to music for enjoyment. Maybe if you hate your neighbours, or have torture in mind, this would be right up your street.