Portishead
"Portishead"

BY MICHELLE GOLDBERG

The first time I heard Portishead's
debut album, "Dummy," each song
built rapturously on the one before.
Just as I was convinced that a song was the record's
pinnacle, a new, lazy, smarmy, brilliant track would
play, eclipsing the one preceding it. Maybe that's why
listening to the band's eponymous second album was
such a disappointment -- my hopes were way too high.
As the songs plodded by, my heart sank and my head
hurt from struggling to hear the band I adore in the dull,
dark music pouring out of my stereo.

On "Dummy," singer Beth Gibbons seemed to teeter on
the edge of a breakdown. Like Billie Holiday, her voice
was full of angelic ennui, with the fault lines lurking just
underneath. It was the tension that made the album so
compelling.

On the new record, Gibbons has cracked. Whereas
before she seemed to exhale the lyrics like a cloud of
opium smoke, here she spits them out. "Dummy" hinted
at something frightful and dissolute, but "Portishead"
could be the soundtrack to a horror movie. The opening
few seconds of "Humming" sound like the score to a
cheap haunted house flick, but without the playful irony
that made the "Halloween" samples on Massive Attack's
"Heat Miser" so darkly delightful. Instead, "Humming"
comes across as a dead-serious goth song.

Part of the hype on the new record is that the band
created all their own samples, which may explain why at
times it seems like a rock record with the beats just
tacked on (there are even shrill electric guitars on "All
Mine"). I was listening to the album with a friend when
he gasped, "This sounds like Grace Slick!" I hate to
admit it, but he's right. There's a cheesy psychedelic
rock-opera vibe to some songs, especially the dreadful
"Seven Months," "Cowboys" and "Elysium." On these
songs, Gibbons hisses the vocals, and the band seems to
be going for an over-the-top noir sound with just a touch
more subtlety than, say, Bauhaus.

Despite all this, there are a few sublime moments hidden
on "Portishead." On "Dummy," Gibbons' singing was
cool and detached, and she evidently wanted to put
more raw emotion into this record. She succeeds on the
undeniably gorgeous "Undenied," a restrained,
heartbreaking blues song with a mellow, muffled dub
beat. "Half-Day Closing" has the spare, narcotic sound
of Portishead's debut, and it's heightened by the quiet
pain in Gibbon's voice. There is also a fantastic,
molasses-slow rap on the end of "Western Eyes" that
seems to come from someone as grizzled and burnt as
Nick Cave or Tom Waits. Usually, a new album with
three good songs would be thrilling, but coming from the
band that put out "Dummy," it can't help but be a
letdown.

SALON | Oct. 8, 1997

Michelle Goldberg is an editorial assistant at Salon.