Please, the next memo, can I be included?
In case you've never heard of Portishead, they're a British band who, in 1994, released the album, Dummy, which is probably most well known for the track 'Numb'. Djae introduced me to the band, and I just got drawn in by the sound of the band, which was dark, and smooth, and like you were lying beneath sky at night, watching it all move. I describe the album like this because it's been twelve years, and it's only upon occasion that my Ipod skips to one of the tracks, but this is the feel I get, the time that my instincts tell me it would be best to listen to the album and fully appreciate it. The vocals on the tracks were provided by Beth Gibbons, who in 2002, did an album with Rustin Man, and which I never heard, but I remember being told about, some time after the fact (by Jon (
underdogautopsy), if I remember right); but part of thing that struck me about the band was Gibbons' voice, the reedy, fragile quality of it, as if it were straining to rise above the sounds produced by Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, and as if it had to pierce through you to do that. It was beautiful, of course, but that was never the fullness of it--if it had just been beautiful, I would, I think, have forgotten about it. But I could remember that voice, that music, and if the second album, the self titled Portishead was not as strong as the first, it wasn't a bad album, and had its highlights, way back in 1997.And then...
Then, a live album, Roseland NYC Live, which was nothing special, a rehash of everything they'd done, and I thought that they had called it quits. New music came, new music went. I bought an Ipod and put all three albums on there, and later took of Roseland for the space. Mostly, I didn't think about the band.
But today, a third album. Third.
It sounds--
Well, so far, it sounds pretty fucking cool, and excuse me while I lose a portion of the day to it.
