The thread for Portishead "Third"

Stevie T told me this album didn't so much exceed his expectation as smash them into a million pieces.

This. Times about a million. I'm not a big Portishead fan but I'm REALLY enjoying this.

This is excellent. SWOON @ 'Hunter' altho I guess that's one of their more 'predictable' tracks/closest to their older sound.

holy shit this is good. the rip is AMAZING. thank you 'i love music' folks for letting me know it had leaked.

This thread made it on a big fan site:

http://pheadweb.com/p_news.html

It's just so great when an album lives up to it's length in coming. The awesome 'Machine Gun' stands out as it's sound and approach is quite different to anything else on there.

All links posted by fans will be removed immediately unless they hook a bro up.

ah pirate bay, gottit

I presume 'Silence' is meant to stop abruptly like that?

Yeah, I think the running length matches the one posted on the official site.

"Silence" and "Machine Gun" are the one-listen standouts

I presume 'Silence' is meant to stop abruptly like that?

-- Matt DC, Saturday, March 8, 2008 3:54 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

wouldn't bet on it.

generally want to hear this properly, uh, but i like it obv.

I reckon it is. Hence the title.

oh the irony

i guess it depends how much 'silence' actually follows it on the record. another way in which mp3 rips suck.

Some of the "every instrument playing the same riff" parts reminded me of the end of The Stooges' Ann - like the end of Small, for instance. In a good way, though. :-)

he mp3s all have about 5 seconds of extra silence (see "Magic Doors" -> "Threads," which are supposed to run together)

Fucking hell - Machine Gun! That's one of the most insistent, emotionless, mechanised drum loops I've ever heard.

Also, Small is STONER ROCK. I keep expecting the Kyuss-esque heavy guitars to pile in any minute.

I hope a vinyl version comes out on Invada

Pff, this stuff is so relentlessly bleak that I'm not sure how often I'll have the courage to put this on (says reformed pseudo-goth)

i don't find this too bleak as compared to burial for example. i see it more as a cold-hot affair. like a glowing glacier. or rubbing your hands in snow. this feeling of warmness coming from the cold. the first four songs except the third which is a little bit boring are portishead grand cru. after that i am not too sure yet.

ugh. i don't want to listen to much like this at ALL right now. i'll probably put it away until halloween ...

"machine gun" is crazy though

I like it! ...exceedingly strange melodic sense in many of these songs, esp. the first and last. The last track is a real stand-out for me.

I'm loving "Small" right now. Above comment OTM re. weird melodic sense. Also I'm pretty impressed by how coherent the sound and atmosphere throughout this record, considering it's been 10 years in the making.

Enjoying this so far. It's their rock album!

It's less coherent in sound than the last two - I put that mostly down to the unexpected pastoral moments - the end of The Rip is astonishing.

I think Jess gets it maybe the wrong way round in his review - this doesn't feel shackled by their 90s records at all to me. This is down to the beats more than anything else, although they can be quite sparse there's a lot of momentum there that's absent in the first couple of albums.

Actually if this album reminds me of any 90s album it's not Dummy at all, but Mezzanine. It's there in the heavy claustrophic sound, the coiled spring feel, everything closing in, and most of all those moments when the guitars pile in.

Just on Machine Gun - amazing! Obviously the beat is phenomonenal, but the melody is absolutey lovely as well.

The 80s synths have just come in! Great stuff.

phenomonenal

Good word.

The synths at the end of Machine Gun reminds me of Vitalic's The Past a little bit.

Let me hear you say this shit is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S
(This shit is bananas)
(B-A-N-A-N-A-S)

Again
This shit is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S
(This shit is bananas)
(B-A-N-A-N-A-S)

makes me wish i'd gone to ATP and heard these songs for the first time that way - i'd avoided the youtube clips of their sets before hearing this

one minor gripe: would've loved Beth's voice to be more spacey and twisted (as on 'Half Day Closing') on the first track, just for that added EVENT effect.

"nylon smile" is nice. sounds like they've been listening to some broadcast

would've loved Beth's voice to be more spacey and twisted (as on 'Half Day Closing') on the first track, just for that added EVENT effect.

I love the fact that they leave it for two minutes before she comes in though. Got chills when she did.

If Can were French.

I like how the production seems so thoroughly unpolished. Agree with Matt that it feels more like Mezzanine than any of the previous Portishead albums - but as if MA had recorded it in Hannibal Lecter's basement rather in a seemingly perfect vacuum. Hunter, the Rip and Machine Gun work very well after two listens.

I like how the production seems so thoroughly unpolished.

I gather it's not mastered yet though, the end result might be less lo-fi.

I hope it isn't.

I dunno, a couple of tracks could use a bit of polishing amd fattening IMHO. I'm a bit of a sucker for clean production, though.

yes, a little more bass would be welcome

No-one watercooling?

Also thinking of the extremely edgy production - there's no attempt to conceal the loops and electronic sounds to make the whole thing "organic". I don't mind a bit of mastering, but hope they maintain that rawness.

Is that a cookie request, Mark?

om nom nom

nom?

I don't think this is an early master. Would they really work on it for ten years and then circulate a "rough" version like that?

Anyway, the rough sound is actually the most pleasantly surprising thing about it.

Is anyone else finding this album to be exceedingly re-listenable?

Not as such, no.

I'm listening to Hunter, Nylon Smile, The Rip, We Carry On and Machine Gun fairly repeatedly. The rest of the album, not so much.

Mark - om nom nom now available...

"Small" is also a highlight

Have they announced what the first single's going to be?

im always so unsure :-/

I think it helps to have something (the voice) to hang all the contraptions on, esp. in this case something so monolithic and samey.

I mean the beak record was loaded with all these great accents but to me they seemed all sort of unmoored to anything. Anyway after two listens the album is pleasingly various...

Listened to this for the first time in about three years. Oh my, it is really, really good.

would kill for an entire album of canterbury sound doom-prog jams

you mean like Small, right (the best track) :D

we're halfway through another ten years, so...

I listened to this about a month ago, but the thread revive made me play it again tonight (while reading through all the posts).

I burned a copy in 2009 of Third with "Chase the Tear" as the last track after "Threads" for listening in my car, but I actually like to think of "Chase the Tear" as the first song from the next album...whenever that may come.

Can't believe it's already been 5 years since this album! Sounds like a classic album whenever I play it.

I love Chase the Tear and would be very happy if it was how the next album was going to sound.

There was an announcement about a new Beth Gibbons album earlier in the year but nothing else has been announced since then.

I still love Portishead but following Geoff Barrow in Twitter was a real "beware yr idols" moment

I still love and adore the transition from "Deep Water" into "Machine Gun"

yeah I listened to this twice today, that was a highlight

still think my back half of mezzanine/back half of third mixtape is a good one

I went back and read the whole 2008 portion of this thread while listening to the album tonight. It still stuns me just like it did the first time I listened to it 11 years ago.

Still the album of the new century/millennium I love the most, tbh.

I know DJP's post is years old now but I went throw Barrow's last few days of Twitter activity and found nothing objectionable. Did he have a twat phase?

I've followed him for a pretty long time, seems like a decent guy, sometimes a bit grumpy. Never noticed him being a twat.

I don't remember the details of what made me say that about Geoff Barrow but it was definitely a series of tweets that made me think he was not particularly fond of Black people

also this album still goes HARD in the paint, one of the best things I've ever purchased

a series of tweets that made me think he was not particularly fond of Black people

Really? That's disappointing. :(

to be clear, that was my interpretation; it certainly wasn't at a level that would make me excise Portishead from my record collection (although I did stop keeping up with Beak)

I can’t find objectionable tweets from him or mention of them elsewhere.

I am listening to this album on a plane and it is so so so so so good

Fantastic airplane listening imo

Gave a fresh listen recently, still so good, wonder if MBV will release a new one before P4 ever appears

Where's my 90's portishead sound? :(

It’s on the 90s albums