The thread for Portishead "Third"

Hmm, that (Nylon Smile) and Plastic are the songs (as opposed to Deep Water which isn't a song but a tedious and thankfully brief exercise in mood alteration) I'm really not feeling at all. May have to keep trying. xpost

I couldn't skip Plastic - those super gated (?) drums are too good, and then the heavy guitars hits in the chorus. We Carry On on the other hand doesn't do much for me, too samey all the way through (relatively speaking - in terms of tempo more than anything). Last minute when the guitar shredding starts is cool but the fact that it;s one of the longest tracks irks me.

"We Carry On", while it sounds groovy for a couple of minutes, does nothing that, say, Massive Attack's "Group Four" doesn't do significantly better.

The drums in "Plastic" absolutely piss me off.

Interesting reaction... how, exactly?

Combining the second half of this album with the second half of Mezzanine would melt faces.

Love love love The Rip, and the video... but the video only serves to remind me MORE of n.y. hotel by the knife? anyone else get that at all?

Oh, er, xposts, they just sound gimmicky and their harshness isn't beautiful-harsh, it's monotonous-harsh. To these ears at any rate.

Dan has just had an incredible idea and I am off to implement it in the form of an iTunes playlist.

Yeah, pretty certain it works best if you have all the Massive Attack songs (Man Next Door onwards) in order, and then Machine Gun -> Threads afterwards. The segue from (Exchange) to MG is fairly groovy.

HOLY CHRIST

AH but WAIT I've thought about this some more and come up with an even GROOVIER, more daring sequence:

1) Group Four
2) Small
3) Man Next Door
4) Machine Gun
5) Mezzanine
6) Magic Doors
7) Black Milk
8) Threads
9) Exchange

Mmmm. Segue from 3 into 4 is U&K, given the similarity-yet-utter-difference in the beat. It's like Machine Gun takes Man Next Door's beat and does WONDERFULLY NASTY things to it.

And starting with Group Four and Small = WE ARE FUCKING UNCOMPROMISING

I love it when an album starts off with such complete and immersive conviction. And tbh "Exchange" HAS to be the final track, it's the reflective not-quite comedown after the storm. That the storm is in this case "Threads" rather than the more maximalist "Group Four" gives this a more Portisheadian sense of reflection, more tragic, less violent.

Meantime, this is old but I finally saw it -- "We Carry On" on British TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nubzSvLCJQo

And I would call that rather stellar.

You know how some people just love the sound of a guitar and will listen to albums that are pretty mediocre because there's a good guitar tone and some cool soloing some times? I feel the same way about drum programming and these guys are so fucking good at it that I could listen to this all day long.

Those Jools clips are fucking astonishing.

I really like "Deep Water". It's very sweet, and the fiftiesish male background vox are a nice touch. So what if it (or any given song on the album, really) isn't SUPERINNOVATION. (stealing that word from Matt C.)

"Plastic", btw, has my second favorite drums on the album, after "Machine Gun".

http://www.waste-central.com/video/video/show?id=2026864:Video:227120

- Radiohead acoustic cover of "The Rip"

I heard them soundcheck that cover in Houston :) !

I did as well. :)
And in St. Louis!

The more times I listen to "The Rip," the more it reminds me of Paula Frazier and Tarnation with electronics. Which now makes me wish I had the capability to completely remix Gentle Creatures.

But that's beside the point. I never noticed such a western gothic quality to Beth Gibbons's voice before this song.

"The Rip" does absolutely nothing that Caribou's "Irene" doesn't do so, so, so much better IMO.

Honestly, Louis, you're being a bit of a twat on this thread. Third is excellent -- not a masterpiece -- but a way-far-above-average record, so why are you protesting too much and comparing every song to something that's (maybe, in your opinion) better on an individual basis, yet still doesn't address the entity we call an "album"? What I mean, in this instance, is that "The Rip" works as well if not better in context with the album on this occasion than "Irene" does in its own context (and I love "Irene"). I mean, this ain't no zero-sum game (as the geeks say).

wow this thread got awful while i was away

Thank God you're back!

sorry

Missed this party but calling bullshit on Louis's position on "Deep Water" as there is no better possible intro for "Machine Gun." Additionally, calling "Deep Water" a mood piece and not actually acknowledging the lyrics is a pretty epic bit of point-missing.

Try listening to other songs before "Machine Gun"! "No better possible intro" is absolutist bullshit in itself. My personal position is that the song is incredibly dull, in conception and execution, and I'm not wavering.

Fact is, the entire album is not as bleak as has been suggested on this thread and the major glimmer of hope is "Deep Water," which has this sort of keep your head up vibe that is almost humorous in light of some of the other sentiments expressed on Third. Yeah obviously I was making an absolutist statement but why wouldn't you sequence a track like that before what is probably the most brutal and uncompromising song on the album, lyrically and musically?

I listened to "Hunter" on an escalator this morning and had a weird I'm-in-a-movie moment. It reminded me of the slow-motion grocery store scene in Morvern Callar that's scored to "Some Velvet Morning."

"Magic Doors" may be my favorite song of the year.

The jump to a major key in the chorus is massive.

1) Group Four
2) Small
3) Man Next Door
4) Machine Gun
5) Mezzanine
6) Magic Doors
7) Black Milk
8) Threads
9) (Exchange)

Gonna listen to this when I get home tonight.

Yeah, rly rly good. :D

http://e.motion.ru/ds/beth/

Listen to L'Annulaire. It's apparently Beth's music for some upcoming French film. Lovely stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRVRp7hKrLI

This is old, not very upcoming or new. But it's still very pretty.

"Machine Gun" makes me want to watch THX 1138

Several months later, "Small" is my favorite song on here.

If only I could see
Return myself to me
And recognize the poison
In my heart
There is no other place
No one else I'd face
The remedy to agree
With how I feel

"small" remark otm

in the spirit of reconciliation i would like to take back basically everything i said abt this record

'small' is still the best track tho, followed by 'threads'

hahaha I knew this would happen eventually

:)

god help us if there's a war

i had a sort of slow revelation. at first it was after 'silence' came on my ipod shuffle and i was all 'omg pause'. then i listened to it at home. several times. each time kinda letting the album play as well. you know how it goes.

let's just say i wd be comfortable with this record placing very highly indeed in the final ilx reckoning

Tried rewatching Doctor Who recently Louis?

am i gonna have to trawl through my back pages and recant everything

hahahahahaha (yes)

if only we could reverse suggest bans

new track and its slamming...

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=11755

i could stand to listen to a whole album of stuff like this, its moroder-neu meets portishead, lovely stuff..