Portishead have been an enigma to many from the day they released Dummy back in 1994, which went on to win the Mercury Prize and sell more than 150,000 copies with minimal press attention. A three-year long hiatus produced Portishead (1997) after which the band hibernated for a long eleven years, to come out with arguably their best work yet - Third. Third is a rumination of life today - ambitious and scathing in its post-modern rip at the fabric of urban living. It reminds us of the stifled lives we live in each song, asking the listener if one can change and break free from the patterns.

Silence opens the album with a Portuguese passage about the rule of three, what you get is what you give; which is followed by soaring rhythms that crash dutifully at Gibbons‘ commands, and ultimately die abruptly.

Nylon Smile is at once - a simple as well as a complex song; simple with its lyrical content where the narrator is a woman torn between trying to feel love, and her real feelings of repression and lack of consolation. Nylon Smile symbolises the fake happiness that is projected to the world, while the narrator is crushed between two polarizing emotions. The song follows a meandering sonic loop, with Beth Gibbons turning in a haunting performance enunciating the coldness, the desperation, and the loneliness of the narrator with each inflection of her voice.

Musically a contrast to the underlying theme of Third is the country-folk inspired Deep Waters with a single guitar accompanying Beth Gibbons and cooing backing vocals. I am drifting in deep waters/ alone by my self-doubting again.

The peaceful strumming of Deep Water is shredded to pieces by the sonic thunder of Machine Gun rattling against the speakers, while Beth Gibbons sings like the martyr out to save the world. After about three minutes, the machine gun deepens into a growl enveloping Gibbons voice and the music takes over. The music proceeds to become even more distorted and inhuman, sonically reflecting the progression the song aims at. A gradual dehumanization by the machine gun.

One of the best tracks is the The Rip. The acoustic guitar is lonesome, while the music patiently progresses into an synth fantasy world of repetitive loops caressing Gibbons soft murmurs. The song is lyrically difficult to understand- and could signify separation, breaking free from a failed relationship or even drugs.

Hunter reminds me of Goldfrapp from the Felt Mountain days — with beautiful music, the voices sinking in the drowsy sounds that alternate between sleeping and waking.

Many songs on Third have repetitive loops, foreboding sounds that generate a feeling of claustrophobia and isolation, which is only broken by the lonesome wails of Gibbons’ voice. It is a dark album, and not dark in the rainy-day way. It is dark and lonely like a moonless dry night lumbering along slowly, music fit for a lonely inhuman cityscape served with burnt coffee and stale food. Philip Glass would be happy. But is the music truly lonesome and sad? Maybe it asks us to stop, shut up, listen and break through the concrete walls trapping us.

A magnificent creation with its gleaming sharp corners, abrupt endings, thunderous synthesizers and silent spaces- Third is an album to listen again and again.

Song Picks:
The entire album in one giant loop.

Listen to Silence by Portishead here: