Right, from trip-hop to yes, more trip-hop. I only really started listening to Portishead earlier this week (I am the world's biggest musical slowpoke...) but I can already say that I like them more than Massive Attack. Why? Their albums are just consistently more brilliant, their songs far more haunting and their singer is just much better than any of the vocalists Massive Attack reel in (although for Hope Sandoval I might make an exception). Dummy is the best example of this; I haven't actually listened to Third yet but I'll be very surprised if it can beat Dummy's level of brilliance.
'Mysterons' starts things off with a chilling and appropriately sci-fi sounding (the Mysterons were the extraterrestrial villains in Captain Scarlet) loop before dropping into a rolling bassline/beat that carries you along with it and refuses to let go. The next track, 'Sour Times', is one of the highlights of the album and really takes things up a notch. The beautiful vocals from Beth Gibbons speak of despair and loss, as well as a burning desire for something distinctly out of reach (the chorus goes 'Nobody loves me/It's true/Not like you do'). A theme of despair seems to run throughout the album, with none of the tracks sounding particularly happy at all. This is no bad thing though. Portishead channel their collective complex of emotions beautifully through their music, this has the effect of drawing you in and leaving you craving for more.
It's not just the emotions running high either. They are clearly very talented; the soundscapes they create here are incredible, going from eerie to intensely powerful within the same song. Listening to Dummy feels less like listening to a trip-hop record and more like a complete thing, a thing about love, loss, despair and everything in between. 'Glory Box' is the perfect closer; it starts off with a lazy bassline (actually a sample) accompanied by Gibbons' ghostly vocals, before exploding into a cacophony of guitars that could be the soundtrack to the end of the world. It brings to mind the climax of Muse song 'Take a Bow'; the apocalypticness and huge sense of scale is still there.
So in summary we have a quite remarkable record here, one which will take every person who listens to it on a personal journey of their own. Just a little bit of advice: don't listen to it if you're feeling a bit emotionally fragile. It'll tear you to pieces.
Rating: 9/10
Released: August 1994
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