portishead :: portishead :: poll

i feel like we have done this one already? "Cowboys" is just genius.

i played this back in the day at work and the tech support guy, who was basically a faithful classic rock radio follower, said 'that sounds like an electric shaver'

Cowboys is the best Portishead song

Definitely the least essential of the three, there's a few samey songs in the second half - couldn't tell you anything about Elysium, Humming or Seven Months. Having said that it's very tough to choose between the rest of the tracks. Cowboys or Western Eyes maybe?

I love how on Cowboys her voice suddenly switches from scary witchiness to frailty on "oh if you take these things from me".

cowboys vs half day closing, both of which have a shout at being portishead's pinnacle

All of them. Or 'Only You'.

i feel like we have done this one already? "Cowboys" is just genius.

― Bee OK, Wednesday, June 26, 2019 9:36 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

looked for it several times, it must have a really good joke name

I've got a strong nostalgic attachment to 'All Mine' but I can't not vote for 'Elysium'.

this poll is actually extremely hard

this is still my fave Portishead album. "Half Day Closing" is unbelievable.

this was my very first portishead album, and i’ve only ever owned it on vinyl, which i think i bought at hot topic in high school. it’s split across two lps and i accidentally put on side two first, so i briefly fooled myself into thinking the album started with “undenied”

every song here really feels like it has equal weight and value to me here, like differently angled photographs of the same haunted space

i guess i could say the same thing about dummy, which i recently realized is a r&b album

you’re all very right about “half day closing”

Wait who said this album was bad

i looked up some old ilx threads about portishead the other day, i don’t recommend it!!

the era of most intense disappointment with trip-hop unfortunately coincided with the youthful exuberance of ilm

i remember going to a dinner party back then and the hosts played dummy, it was mildly embarrassing

My lp is one disc, it's very long.

i vote for the ride cymbal on this album

just last saturday i was drummin' with La L and mentioned how the ride cymbal on this album is all time.

does anyone know what it is?

zyldjian classic V kenny clarke pro model, '93 reissue with masticated bell

<3

I was 12 or 13 at the time and my dad saw the video for 'All Mine' on TV and asked me if I liked it. I said yes, so he bought the album and we listened to it together. I picked up Dummy soon after.

i looked up some old ilx threads about portishead the other day, i don’t recommend it!!

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, June 27, 2019 10:27 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the era of most intense disappointment with trip-hop unfortunately coincided with the youthful exuberance of ilm

― j., Thursday, June 27, 2019 10:48 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i remember going to a dinner party back then and the hosts played dummy, it was mildly embarrassing

― j., Thursday, June 27, 2019 10:49 PM

then they channeled the youthful enthusiasm into !!! and the third Portishead album

I searched for "polltishead" and didn't find anything, so it doesn't seem like we've done this before!

S/T is still my favorite of theirs, the tracks with Beth's vicious spoiled milk vox are still awesome, but "Western Eyes" is such a soothing sonic balm.

this poll is actually extremely hard

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, June 27, 2019 5:34 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm down to Cowboys, All Mine, Half Day Closing, Over... well, I haven't really narrowed it down at all.

Even though the uncertainty was taking me over, I went with All Mine.

I was 12 or 13 at the time and my dad saw the video for 'All Mine' on TV and asked me if I liked it. I said yes, so he bought the album and we listened to it together. I picked up Dummy soon after.

― pomenitul, Friday, June 28, 2019 3:55 AM (nineteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Love this

voted Half Day Closing, it's a full horror movie in under four minutes

This is the best album ever that I never feel like listening to (one of my college housemates did play it 3 times a week for 2 years tho).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

voted only you bc the roseland set makes it the first one that comes to mind

"elysium", groundlessness & the edge of overflow occupying the same shape

Controp that "Cowboys" is not good, dwarfed by the superior "All Mine" that attempts the same height and exceeds it

Love "Over", love watching Roseland NYC and seeing that Geoff Barrow is excellent at "decks"!

I argue that this is the worst Portishead album, too "spy movie", not enough genuine suffering

I'd vote "Half Day Closing" for that crazy vocal moment, but that's not what this album is really about, this album is about pastiche, and "All Mine" is the most successful example of that, so I voted for "All Mine"

Half day closing was one of the first songs I learned on bass so that one.

Only You (more understated than the other singles + better chorus)

you know what? i never really got on with Portishead save for a couple of songs (Glory Box, The Rip). That's sacrilege where I'm from.

I too like them better in theory than on practice. I have all their albums but very rarely feel like listening.

Half Day Closing is one of those songs where I can remember the first time I heard it, and it seemed enticingly alien. But it's textured and weary like Happiness is a Warm Gun. That whole familiar + new thing.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Aw I really like Undenied and Western Eyes (think I forgot to vote though).

somehow i never really listened to this album. and dummy totally knocked me out. all mine is much brighter than anything on dummy. only you starts like a gimmick with that trickery imitating duck noises. and it isn't very somber neither. this definitely misses a kind of profoundness i feel. half day closing does not work for me on first listen. she is trying too hard on that one.

duck noises??????!?!?!?

https://www.thespruce.com/thmb/OZMhZeQtehT_XQrrP2kfoJqV_Nk=/960x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/duck-big-bill-59ef8e5068e1a2001072c89e.jpg

i think it is a kind of scratching which creates that high-pitch sound which has got a similarity to duck chatter i find. this sound is almost a trademark of portishead, they use a similar sound at the beginning of mysterons which is even more duck like.

That's the one

How prescient of them:

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/local-news/portishead-ducks-swans-wallowing-mud-1844328

Only You is pretty darn sombre.

Didn't see the poll, would've voted "Over".
Never knew people thought the record was bad. Loved it when it came out and still do. I thought it was darker than Dummy.

I was a huge fan of the first album at the time and didn't care for this one immediately upon release. I was disappointed right away, and despite buying the LP, CD, and 2 different 12"s from this album, I never really played it much. Possible issues: too long between albums with very little variance in sound - lots of things sounded like a retread, there were loads of imitators who released music between the two albums, the songs just aren't as good.

I don't know why this album gets so much flack, it rules. Also I think the first two records have come around from being 'dated' (very evocative of their time and place, overplayed, lots of imitators) to sounding prescient & not dated at all.

It also seems overly simplistic to cast the first album as sample-based and this one as not...Dummy had more samples, but still had a ton of live instrumentation that was very creatively resampled & processed (same as the s/t).

this album gets flak?? it completely rules, an outstanding not even slightly disappointing second album. so many great tunes, “only you”, “mourning air”, “half day closing”, “all mine” ffs. dummy had more synthetic sounds, like the drum machine on “it could be sweet”, this leans into the John Barry shit hard.

there's like two posts slamming the album just within the last bump

This is the first album I go to when I want to listen to Portishead. I really never got why it was generally considered to be worse than the other 2.

1. Portishead
2. Third
3. Dummy

Is how I would rank them, which I guess is the opposite of most people

it was the eighth of november in the year of our lord two thousand twenty three when i first discovered there are assholes who thought the second portishead album was disappointing. it was a sunny day and i had an extra cup of coffee.

(the b-sides from this album are fab, btw)

it was the eighth of november in the year of our lord two thousand twenty three when i first discovered there are assholes who thought the second portishead album was disappointing

my friend, it appears that like me you missed that there were like two posts in this thread in the year 2019 expressing disappointment with the second portishead album, we are completely out of the damn loop

nb that is a totally silly post, <3 austin and ivy

this album rules, i probably listened to it ten times as much as dummy (which i love), but this one hit at just the right time. idk why but its to me reminiscent of the move cypress hill made from the s/t to black sunday. a darker refinement of the earlier album, with a bleaker, dirtier sound, even more paranoid and more down in the depths than the previous work (which in both cases was already down there.)

Tbf I also was looking at *other* old ILM threads.

Portishead - are we fickle or did they deserve to become dated so quickly?

Also I think I didn't really distinguish between the first two albums because I got into the live album first and worked backwards

Adrian Utley is auctioning off his Portishead live rig Moog to support Gaza. I assume there will be two extra zeroes over what I could pay but that would be a cool thing to have (and very cool of AU).

I would also rank them Portishead -> Third -> Dummy, with Third nearly being a tie. Actually felt this was a fairly common take, but I suppose not...

I thought they were okay until I heard Only You and the rest of that album. It's a masterpiece.

Third nearly being a tie for first I meant to say

Does anyone else hear in “Elysium” that the background loop, which seems like typical LP crackle, is actually a distorted male voice muttering, “I’m dirty, I’m dirty, I am dirty, I’m dirty”, etc.?

I think Portishead are like numerous 00s indie bands in that the debut will always be the canon, totem choice and also the one I find will probably always find least interesting. Portishead is so clearly a total improvement in every way imo, and Third is my favourite but ofc clearly something else altogether.

Anyway, despite the heavy debt to “The American Metaphysical Circus”, I’d have picked “Half Day Closing” for two reasons: the awesomely crummy-sounding guitar that comes in on the second chorus, and a vocal that rivals Annisette or Dagmar Krause in its combination of bereft misery and destructive rage.

I’m terms of comparing the albums, I think they’re fairly equal: three or four great songs, four or five good songs, two or three failed experiments or dreary exercises apiece.

always enjoy Adrian Utley talking about making music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlv9i0XC8NA