Review: Portishead's Third

This post was submitted by Craig Laurance Gidney, a native Washingtonian who blogs and publishes the occasional piece of fiction.

The trip-hop pioneers have returned with a difficult, dense album. Theirs a hybrid sound, full of aural trompe l'oeil: film noir soundtracks festooned with industrial beats ("Silence"), tender folk songs that evolve into bleak early 80s synth pop ("The Rip"). Sci-fi sound effects and jazz samples underscore and frame songs, decaying away to reveal nude beats.

Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow have created a claustrophobic song cycle filled with menace. They've also added snippets of early New Order and proto-electroclash to the mix ("We Carry On")—astringent atonalities that roughen their cinematic leanings. (More David Lynch, less 40s noir). Singer Beth Gibbons' voice is at its most stark and vulnerable. On past Portishead albums, and on her underrated solo recording, "Out of Season," she explored various vocal styles, wedding the bent blues of Billie Holiday with the iciness of early Siouxsie Sioux. Now, she sounds wounded and lost, stripped of her affectations, lost in the shadows. She's not afraid to sound unpleasant—the slightly off-key harmonizing of "Small" is effectively eerie, and elsewhere, her voice is distorted twisted through the compositions.

If 'Third' has a weakness, its that it's relentlessly dark. 'Third' creates a singular mood that can bring full-on night on the bright of days.