Third is the third studio album by the English band Portishead. It was released on 28 April 2008 in the United Kingdom by Island Records and a day later in the United States by Mercury Records. Portishead's first studio album in eleven years, Third moved away from the trip hop style they had popularised, incorporating influences such as krautrock, surf rock, doo wop and the film soundtracks of John Carpenter.
After Portishead released their self-titled second album in 1997, the songwriter and drummer, Geoff Barrow, put Portishead on hiatus and moved to Australia. He became uninterested in music, and efforts to develop new songs with the guitarist and keyboardist, Adrian Utley, failed. They were inspired to create again after producing with the band the Coral, and restarted work with the singer, Beth Gibbons, in Bristol, England.
Third entered the top ten of several countries' music charts and was certified gold in the UK.[1] It was named one of the best albums of 2008 by several publications; in 2013, NME ranked it number 330 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[2]
Background
In 1998, following three years of tours and a divorce, the drummer and songwriter Geoff Barrow put Portishead on hiatus and went to Australia. He told Drowned in Sound: "I couldn't find anything I liked musically in anybody, in anything."[3] The guitarist and keyboardist Adrian Utley joined him to work on new material, but they were not satisfied with the results.[3]
In 2003, Barrow wrote "Magic Doors", which he described as "an opening ... then we ended up going back and forth, hating everything and then liking everything, and we had to decide whether to carry on."[3] He and Utley co-produced the 2005 Coral album The Invisible Invasion. The process proved inspiring; according to Barrow, "Here's me and Ade, these older dudes, too scared to even play a note because we were scared we'd hate it, and there’s them, just being able to write a soundtrack in an afternoon."[3]
Recording
Portishead self-produced Third in their Bristol studios. Many of the songs existed for years as sketches, with the members exchanging recordings and adding ideas.[4] By 2006, Portishead had prepared six or seven tracks. Barrow said most of the record was written during a "spurt" at the end of 2007.[3]
Wanting to move away from the trip hop sound they had popularised, Portishead avoided using instruments they had used before; Barrow said "the basic thing was to sound like ourselves, not to repeat ourselves".[5] The band members experimented with swapping roles; Barrow played bass, and the singer Beth Gibbons played guitar on "Threads". Utley said Portishead were "looking for limited frequency in instruments ... limited playing, too. I pursued virtuosity for many years, learning scales and harmony, and being able to improvise through scales and chords, but technique isn't important for me any more."[4]
For the first track, "Silence", Barrow initially sampled a record that had a spoken-word Portuguese introduction. Inspired by a Wiccan theory about the number three, Portishead wrote a "manifesto", had it translated into Portuguese, then recreated the sample with the new words to introduce the album. They did not synchronise the guitar's delay effect with the tempo, creating harsh, asynchronous echoes.[4]
Portishead used analogue synthesisers including the ARP 2600.
Portishead used several analogue synthesisers, including a Minimoog,[6]Korg MS-20, ARP 2600, Siel Orchestra and VCS 3,[4] and a clavioline, an electronic keyboard that predates the synthesiser. For "Threads", the band used the "evil" detuned sound of the VCS 3 to create a foreboding horn-like sound, inspired by the English progressive rock band Hawkwind.[4] The Siel Orchestra's sequencer was not sophisticated enough to play the arpeggios in "The Rip", so the band recorded the notes individually and edited them into an arpeggio pattern. The track also features a toy acoustic guitar Utley found in a junk shop.[4]
"Deep Water" was inspired by Steve Martin's performance of "Tonight You Belong to Me" in the 1979 film The Jerk.[4] Utley was initially unimpressed with Barrow's concept for the song, and said: "I couldn't get with it at all, didn't like it. Geoff said he wanted to put these backing vocals on it, and I said I was having nothing to do with it. We didn't argue, I just conceded on that. But now I really quite like it, and the funny thing is Geoff is moving the other way on it."[4]
To create the rhythm on "Machine Gun", Portishead sampled the drum machine in an old electronic organ. The synthesiser outro was inspired by the film soundtracks of John Carpenter.[4] For "Magic Doors", the band added hurdy-gurdy, and saxophone played by Will Gregory of Goldfrapp. According to Utley, "We made [Gregory] be a free jazz player that day ... We told him just to go fucking mad, to freak the fuck out. He had to move out of the room, so we couldn't see him, so he'd feel less inhibited."[4]
Music
Third contains elements of electronica,[7]experimental rock[8] and psychedelic rock.[9] It departs from Portishead's trip hop sound, the genre they had popularised with their albums Dummy (1994) and Portishead(1997).[10][11] It also contains no turntable scratching, a hallmark of their earlier albums.[10] Gareth Grundy of Q wrote that "Third's sole link with the past is Gibbons' voice ... Everything else has been binned, the hip hop, the cinematic feel, the lot."[12] Instead, Third contains "muscular" synthesisers, drum breaks and abrupt endings, with "propulsive" krautrock rhythms,[13]break beats, cathedral organ, "Moroccan drones" and surf rock.[14]The AV Club wrote that Gibbons "sounds more hollowed-out and harrowed than ever, a human nervous twitch on too much coffee and too little sleep".[10]
The opening track, "Silence", has a "propulsive" drum loop and "Morse code"-like guitar.[15] "We Carry On" has a "claustrophobic" two-note electro riff; Rolling Stonelikened it to the work of the American psychedelic band Silver Apples.[14] "Deep Water" is a "ukulele doo-wop".[13] "Machine Gun" is driven by a "mechanical" rhythm that gives way to synthesisers which Drowned in Sound likened to the soundtracks of the 1980s films The Terminator and Blade Runner.[15] "Magic Doors" features "huge" piano chords, "tick-tocking" cowbell, and "corrupted" brass.[15]
On 8 and 9 December 2007, Portishead curated the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, England, and performed their first full sets in nearly 10 years, including tracks from Third.[19] On 21 January 2008, Portishead announced a European tour to support the album,[20] with a headline spot at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on 26 April 2008,[21] their only US date on the tour.
On 21 April 2008, a week before its release, Third was made available as a free stream on Last.fm, attracting 327,000 listeners in 24 hours. It was the first time Last.fm made an album available before its release.[22]Third was the fifth-bestselling vinyl record of 2008, selling 12,300 copies.[23]
At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews and ratings from mainstream critics, Third has a metascore of 85 based on 38 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[24]
In his review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said Third was "genuinely, startlingly original" and "utterly riveting and endlessly absorbing".[8]The A.V. Club's Michaelangelo Matos wrote that "nearly every track provides some little sonic goody midway through as a reward for continued attention after all these years. For once, it's worth the effort."[10] Reviewing Third for Drowned in Sound, Nick Southall wrote that "several individual songs drift by almost unnoticed at first, contributing little more than a sense of unease to the collective memory of the album; an impression of oppression. Those numbers that do stand out, though, drag the record close to magnificence."[15] John Payne of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "Though several doses of this languid, tension-filled music get a tad draining, taken altogether it is a suitable sound for our troubling times, and there's an invigorating mysteriousness. Its blaring electronic peals are a wake-up call."[25] The Guardian reviewer Jude Rogers found that the album "is initially more a record to admire than to love ... But after several listens, Third's majesty unfurls."[13]
Louis Pattison of NME wrote that Third was "adventurous, sometimes dauntingly so – but seldom anything less than compelling" and said it was Portishead's best album.[26]PopMatters' Alan Ranta wrote that it would eventually be seen on par with Portishead's earlier work.[29]Pitchfork's Nate Patrin named Third the week's "best new music", writing that it was "a staggering transformation and a return to form that was never lost, an ideal adaptation by a group that many people didn't know they needed to hear again".[9] In Rolling Stone,Rob Sheffield wrote that Third was "an unexpected yet totally impressive return".[14] Mike Bruno of Entertainment Weekly said it was less accessible than Portishead's earlier music, but "no less gorgeous".[11] Gareth Grundy of Q gave it three out of five and was disappointed that Portishead had moved away from their earlier sound, writing: "Third will probably be more admired than listened to ... Dummy was a challenging record that just happened to find an audience. Third merely turns up the black until the darkness is overwhelming."[12]
Portishead are an English band formed in 1991 in Bristol. The band comprises Beth Gibbons (vocals), Geoff Barrow, and Adrian Utley (guitar). Dave McDonald, an audio engineer who helped produce the band's first two albums, is sometimes regarded as the fourth member.
Dummy is the debut studio album by English electronic music band Portishead, released on 22 August 1994 by Go! Beat Records.
Absolution is the third studio album by the English rock band Muse, released on 15 September 2003 through Taste Media. It was produced by Muse and Rich Costey, with additional production by John Cornfield and Paul Reeve.
Beth Gibbons is an English singer-songwriter. She is the singer and lyricist for the band Portishead, which has released three albums. She released an album with Rustin Man, Out of Season, in 2002, and a recording of Górecki's Symphony No. 3 with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2019.
Portishead is the self-titled second studio album by the English electronic music group Portishead, released on 29 September 1997 by Go! Discs. The album cover is a still image from the music video of the song "All Mine".
The Invisible Invasion is the fourth studio album by English rock band the Coral. It was released on 23 May 2005, through Deltasonic. Following on from the stop-gap release of the mini album Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker (2004), the band began recording their next album with Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley of Portishead as producers. Sessions were mainly held at Monnow Valley Studio, with additional recording being done at Elevator Studios. Described as a psychedelia album, it had more of a stripped-down sound compared to their past releases.
Roseland NYC Live is a live album by English electronic music band Portishead. It was released on 2 November 1998 by Go! Beat. A PAL format VHS video was released the same year, with a DVD version following four years later. Although the New York Philharmonic is credited as appearing in the video, none of the musicians are members of the Philharmonic, nor is the Philharmonic credited in the audio album.
Out of Season is a studio album by vocalist Beth Gibbons and bassist Paul Webb. It was released on 28 October 2002 in the United Kingdom and on 7 October 2003 in the United States. Out of Season is largely a folk album with jazz leanings, with Gibbons and Webb drawing more directly on the influences of Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, and Nick Drake, at which Portishead's work in trip hop only hinted. Out of Season also features contributions from Gibbons' fellow Portishead bandmate Adrian Utley and Webb's former bandmate Lee Harris. The first track of the album, "Mysteries", appears on the original soundtrack of the French movie Les Poupées Russes, and in Wim Wenders' Palermo Shooting from 2008. The album achieved a silver certification from the BPI.
Geoffrey Paul Barrow is an English music producer, composer, and DJ. He is a member of the bands Portishead, Beak, and Quakers, and he has scored several films.
Black Holes and Revelations is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Muse, first released on 3 July 2006 through Warner Bros. Records and Muse's Helium-3 imprint. It was produced by Rich Costey over four months in New York City, London, Milan, and southern France. It saw a change in style for Muse, with influences including Depeche Mode, Millionaire, Lightning Bolt, Sly and the Family Stone, and music from Southern Italy. Like their previous albums, it features political and dystopian undertones, with lyrics covering topics such as political corruption, alien invasion, revolution and New World Order conspiracies, as well as more conventional love songs.
Adrian Francis Utley is an English musician and producer, and a member of the band Portishead.
Heligoland is the fifth studio album by English electronic music duo Massive Attack, released on 8 February 2010 by Virgin Records. Named after a German archipelago, it was their first studio album in seven years, following 100th Window (2003). It has been certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
The discography of Lostprophets, a Welsh alternative rock band formed in Pontypridd, Wales in 1997 and active until 2012, contains five studio albums, three EPs, and seventeen singles.
"All Mine" is the second track and first single from English electronic music band Portishead's self-titled second album (1997). The song was released as a single in September 1997 by Go! Discs and London, along with "Cowboys", "Only You" and "Over". The accompanying music video—based on a 1968 Italian music show and The Outer Limits—featured a little girl singing in front of an orchestra. The single reached No. 8 in the United Kingdom and is so far the band's only top 10 hit there. It was also covered on Tom Jones's 1999 album Reload.
The discography of British trip hop group Portishead consists of three studio albums, one live album, one compilation, ten singles and one video album. The Bristol-based band consists of Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and Adrian Utley.
"Machine Gun" is a song by English band Portishead. The song made its radio and download debut on 24 March 2008, acting as the lead single from their third studio album, Third (2008). It premiered on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show and was made available for download on the band's official website. A UK one-sided 12 inch vinyl was released on 14 April 2008.
"Only You" is a single by English band Portishead, released in 1998 by Go! Discs and London Records as the third single from the band's self-titled second album (1997). The song was later released in a promotional French language lyrics version. Portishead performed the song on American television variety show Saturday Night Live on January 17, 1998.
Singles Collection is a compilation album by The Coral, released on 15 September 2008 in the United Kingdom on the Deltasonic label. It featured a new song "Being Somebody Else", which was released as a single on 8 September 2008.
Slipway Fires is the third album by English indie rock band Razorlight. It was released on 3 November 2008.
Everything Now is the fifth studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on July 28, 2017, through Sonovox Records, Columbia Records, and Rough Trade Records. It was produced by Arcade Fire, alongside Thomas Bangalter of the electronic-house duo Daft Punk and Steve Mackey, the bassist of the band Pulp. Additionally, Markus Dravs, one of Arcade Fire's frequent collaborators, co-produced two tracks, and he, Geoff Barrow of Portishead, and Eric Heigle each provided additional production on one track.
↑ "Czech Albums – Top 100". ČNS IFPI. Note: On the chart page, select 19.Týden 2008 on the field besides the words "CZ – ALBUMS – TOP 100" to retrieve the correct chart. Retrieved 5 March 2020.
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