#7 - Third

#7
Artist: Portishead
Album: Third
Year of Release: 2008
Label: Island/Mercury

In the mid-90's, Portishead made two albums that set the mark for trip hop and then disappeared for a spell.  Had that been it for them, their legacy would have been secure as a brilliant if peculiar shooting star.  Luckily they returned a decade later with something even more brilliant and even more peculiar: A Portishead record that feels distinctly like a Portishead record but one that abandons the trip hop mantra and becomes something both more precise and more ethereal.

This difference is clear almost immediately.  Whereas most previous Portishead songs feature a straightforward structure filtered through their funhouse mirror sound, "Silence" most certainly does not.  The opening track begins with a spoken-word passage in Portuguese with some sort of piano backing which then transitions into a mood-setting guitar section (complete with plenty of goodies).  Then that fades away just as Beth Gibbons' muted vocals begin, which eventually ushers in the crescendo that doesn't stop until the very end.  This is something else entirely and so is the rest.  The synth bridge in "The Rip," the ukulele in "Deep Water," and the....whatever it is in "Machine Gun" - all of this serves to differentiate each song as well as the album as a whole.  By the time we get to the ninth track "Small," we've reached the band's apex.  A near-seven-minute culmination of everything that came before it, equal parts delicately crafted and bombastically overflowing.  There's no topping this.  It's no surprise they haven't released anything since.