Favorite Portishead album

Please amend the poll to include Portishead NYC Live

S/T but Third gives it some competition.

Their evolution is pretty cool. While they were ground breaking as a trip hop act, the change on Third is remarkable. They went from super palatable, ultra hip music to something riskier and more damaged. Like making out to Third would be a lot weirder.

I'm torn on this vote.

Third has aged really well. The others haven't.

I think it's unfortunate Third is kind of seen as a lesser comeback album.

It sounds separate from everything they did before and even all other music.

Third came out in 2008 and it was weird. I feel like it got lost in the time it came out, but this also contributes to why it is so cool.

Comparatively, the earlier stuff sounds pretty gimmicky (Lets make out and have sexual intercourse *turntable scratch*)

Everyone was putting on Portishead to make out and go somewhere and on Third they said "No. Sit in this."

A really really strange and mysterious album.


THIRD.



(Roseland NYC live is excellent)

Third.

Obnoxious aside: The Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man album beats them all.

Happyman wrote: Mon Apr 17, 2023 10:22 pm Third has aged really well. The others haven't.

Well it is over 10 years newer than the other records, so no big surprise. So much later in fact, I didn't actually know it existed. The band is okay, but the first one is the only one that is appropriate for sexy time.

The debut is really great, def the most sonically realised of the first wave of trip hoppers. IMO Massive Attack and Tricky didn't quite blend their ingredients / influences as well and this shows in the atmosphere of the final product.

Dummy is just dripping w/ this lush, erotic, sinister, nocturnal vibe that's particularly evocative. The beat on 'Strangers' sounds like an LP player is still spinning at the end of the record in a room full of bodies too stoned to stand up and do anything about it - that warm wash of inertia punctured by little unwelcome jolts of reality...

Music is rarely that transportive.

Sure, NOW Dummy is the sound of a million bourgeois dinner parties and a thousand unimaginative TV show promos, but it wasn't always thus.

I like albums 2 and 3 fine but they exist very much in the shadow of Dummy.

M.H wrote: Tue Apr 18, 2023 4:15 am Sure, NOW Dummy is the sound of a million bourgeois dinner parties and a thousand unimaginative TV show promos, but it wasn't always thus.

It was. That's not a knock on the album at all, but it was. I wouldn't say it is now though, as The XX seems to have replaced it.

zorg wrote: Tue Apr 18, 2023 4:13 am

Happyman wrote: Mon Apr 17, 2023 10:22 pm Third has aged really well. The others haven't.

Well it is over 10 years newer than the other records, so no big surprise. So much later in fact, I didn't actually know it existed. The band is okay, but the first one is the only one that is appropriate for sexy time.

What i meant, aside from that the other two aged quite poorly, is that i think that Third sounds better now than when it came out. I feel like if it were to come out tomorrow rather than in a weird pocket of 2008, it would be better received.