Portishead - Third

By Ian Kirby

Great albums need a great backdrop.

Morcheeba’s Big Calm slips down best in a pool, watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean.

Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth comes to life when you're haring through the mayhem of New York's gridlock'd roads.

With Dummy, Portishead’s still extraordinary 1994 debut, it’s sitting by the fireside in a remote Scottish croft listening to the wind howl and sipping single malt.

The perfect place to listen to Third, the Bristol trio's, er, third LP, would be in the smoking ruins of a post-apocalyptic city. Or maybe Dagenham.

This is bleak stuff from the off.

The staccato stutter of Machine Gun recalls the closing scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Clangs and bangs thud across Beth Gibbons’ unique voice – itself stronger and smoother than 11 years ago.

But this veneer of darkness is balanced by moments of breath-taking fragility.

The Rip is a delicate acoustic lament. Once again "another life is over" for Beth, but now she sees solace in love that keeps the darkness at bay.

It’s an absolute belter, and it’s Portishead all over – the best track on the album.

Magic Doors comes close. The sound of a life support machine being switched off morphs into a haunting drum-beat elegy.

A Portishead album wouldn’t be complete without an orchestra and the violins are back in the final track, Threads.

Gibbons wails "Better if I can find the words to say. Whenever I take a choice, it turns away."

It’s a sentiment that sums up the album's difficult birth. Eleven years of false starts, dead-ends and loss of faith - but these dark, fractured tunes were worth the wait.

Trip hop was the soundtrack to the chill-out years of the late 1990s. Third is fit for these harsher days.

Youthful dreams have evaporated, replaced by the realisation that life is hard and pain is always closeby.

This album was never going to be as enjoyable a listen as Dummy. And it never should have been. It is about bigger things, reflecting sourer times.

Bleak but beautiful: if you listen to it in the dark make sure you’ve got a torch handy.

Not so much Glory Box, but there's real treasure in this gory box.

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