Nobody does this better
Portishead reviewed

By BEN RAYNER
Ottawa Sun

PORTISHEAD
Portishead
(Go Beat/PolyGram 539 189 2)

No matter how good the new Portishead record eventually turned out
to be, it was doomed to be labelled second best from the moment the
Bristol, England-based trip-hop pioneers unleashed their epochal
debut, Dummy, three years ago.

That album's groundbreaking marriage of hip-hop beats, torchy
cocktail jazz, dub atmospherics and Duane Eddy-ish guitar
twang quickly became one of this decade's most-admired and
most-imitated sounds (recent records by the Sneaker Pimps and
Hooverphonic, for instance, have borrowed liberally from the
Portishead formula). So, on Portishead, the band is excused for
not forging too far ahead into new territory -- it's enough that
Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and their assorted hangers-on
have re-established themselves as the reigning masters of
"electronica noir."

And noir it is: If Dummy was a dark record, Portishead is
positively despondent -- a succession of slow, brooding
snapshots from a velvet-shrouded nightclub in hell.

"We suffer every day," Gibbons sings on Only You. No kidding:
Her suffering doesn't let up here for the entire album.

Wailing like a frail, rave-damaged shut-in one minute and cooing
with sexy (almost schizophrenic) jazz-club quiet the next,
Gibbons turns Portishead into an emotionally exhausting trek
through the barren land of abandonment and unrequited love.

Barrow -- the cinematically minded DJ behind much of the
band's distinctive sound -- scratches together an appropriately
moody soundtrack for her ordeal from warmly crackling vinyl,
spare samples (Inspector Clouseau's theme, rappers The
Pharcyde, Sean Atkins's '50s lament Hookers And Gin) and a
healthy knowledge of film history.

All Mine, the album's first single, swings woozily on a booming
bass pulse and bursts of big-band brass and distorted
spy-movie guitar. Humming creeps like a theremin-laced
horror-film score, while on Cowboys Gibbons fatalistically
intones the line "If you take these things from me ..." over a
soundtrack that's half Ennio Morricone, half Massive Attack.

Nothing particularly new, but nobody does it better.