Third

If my anxiety had a soundtrack it would be this album. No thanks.

This album is so cool. What else sounds like this? It's bursting with ideas! To me this album has a clear point of view, it sounds like impending danger, like fear of the future. It's dark and anxious. I love it

One of few albums I've heard being so weird yet really pulling it off. Industrial, apocalyptic yet soft. 4.5 on first listen.

Music to play while you and your friends sneak into a graveyard in high school

You're in for a real treat if you enjoy bleeding from your ears.

"Third" is the third studio album and first in 11 years from Bristol UK band Portishead. This is quite the intense listen. It was a move away from trip hop on their previous albums and influenced and incorporating Krautrock rhythms, breakbeats, cathedral, Morrocan drums, soft rock, doo wop and science fiction/horror soundtracks. I can attest to that; there is so much going on throughout this album. In a nutshell, it's experimental electronic music. The one constant is Beth Gibbons' vocals giving each song a mysterious feel along with the music. And, Portishead is Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley. Each band member seems to play every instrument at some point: various keyboards, dums and pecussion, bass, guitars and more. The album start with "Silence" and a Potuguese vocal sample and foreboding keyboards. Some sort of drum loop going on. Maybe about the Golden Rule. "The Rip" was the second single and begins with a weird acoustic guitar. The vocals are haunting and seem to be about a broken relationship. The music transitions with synthesizers coming upfront sounding like the "Stranger Things" intro music. The albums' second half has two more of their released singles. "Machine Gun" was the lead single and starts with a mechanical rhythm, definitely sounding like a machine gun, which eventually gives way and builds with synthesizers and keyboards. It has cryptic lyrics and appears to be another one about a broken relationship. Their last single " Magic Doors" has a weird drum beat beginning and background synthesizers which eventually come to the forefront. Beth Gibbons' vocals dominate the song and again have a mysterious, cryptic meaning...sexual orientation? depression? Every song is unique on this album; I think I could listen to this 20 times and find something different each time with everything going on. I found this album fantastic and recommend it to anyone willing to take a deep dive into experimental electronic music.

This album was boring. I like ambient beeps and boops, but these beeps and boops bored me

Triphop-a-riffic!

Such a unique style. This album is like a soundtrack to a dark, confusing dream. A great application of electronic instruments to create a feeling of uneasiness.

Talk about bleak... this seems like the perfect accompaniment to my increasingly frequent moments of despair. The lead singer ranges from worn to desperate accentuated with occasional banshee moments. Some highlights: “The Rip” has a lovely vocal performance and really wonderful synthesizers. I love this song. Ends in such lushness. “Deep Water” is an odd ukulele piece in the album that still felt strangely in place as the most positive-feeling song here. I like it. “We Carry On” is a fast, relentless song that may be the best option if you wanted to dance to something on this album. I loved it. The out of tune guitar strumming leads into a section where the song feels on the verge of flying apart, but I found it very satisfying when it did not. “Magic Doors” feels like one of the more personal feeling songs on the album. I love its odd beats, the accordion, and the vocal performance. What a brilliant song! “Threads” closes the album with the lyrics “I am one, Damned one, Where do I go?” It’s got quite an ending with a lone bellowing, evil horn. Chilling. Where their debut album “Dummy” was something I could listen to as I worked, “Third” might be a little too ominous for that. It has now been 14 years since this album was released. I don’t know if Portishead will ever release another, but it would be interesting to see where they go from this dark place. I was very unsure initially how I felt about THIRD. On the second time through it came together for me and I fell in love with this album. THIRD is exceptional - and perfect for the world I’m living in.

Such a cool and unique sound, so much anguish. Every song can be interpreted differently by everyone. There are some very sweet moments like Deep Water. Singing isn't the most controlled, but contributes to their authenticity

Thanks to this project, I now know what the love child of Robert Wyatt and Bjork sounds like and it is this. I will pay you to turn it off.

J'ai bien entendu toujours horreur de Portishead. Rien ne colle entre la voix, les instruments et la mélodie mais venons-en à l'essentiel. Vous savez probablement que la dernière mise à jour du générateur et sa fonctionnalité permettant de voir quels reviews étaient les plus "likés" du site a propulsé mon nom de robbelvédère en haut de l'affiche. Ma notoriété dépasse aujourd'hui très largement le cadre de ce site et il ne se passe pas un jour sans que l'on m'arrête dans la rue. "Robbelvédère ! Robbelvédère ! J'ai adoré ton review d'Abbey Road !" entendais-je encore ce matin. Et c'est là que ça coince. J'ai rappelé à la charmante demoiselle qui prononça ces mots que ma carrière ne se résumait pas à ce simple review et que j'en avais rédigé pas loin d'une cent-cinquantaine tous plus inspirés que les autres. Je me sens aujourd'hui comme doit probablement se sentir Jean-Marie Bigard quand on l'arrête dans la rue pour lui dire à quel point on aime son sketch de la chauve-souris. "Et mon sketch de la merde qui tombe dans la cuvette, c'est de la chiasse pour vous ?" doit sûrement penser l'intéressé. En bref, je vous conseille vivement de ne pas vous arrêter à mon "hit review" et de lire les autres avec la même attention.

I can't for the life of me work out what the point of this is, let alone why it would appear on a list of albums I need to hear before I die. There's bugger all meaningful structure, no ups or downs, amazingly little substance and it's not particularly musical or even dissionant enough to raise an eyebrow.... it just exists. for 50min. Is anyone out there dull enough that they'd list this as their favourite album ever? Thank fuck I had a couple of other things on the boil while this played, because if I'd had nothing else to do I think I'd still be sitting there waiting for this to finish. What a boring, absolute non-event of an album. 1/5.

Tough listen. Really hampered by the vocals. I'm sure there are people out there who are into this but it's so mopey and dark. The instruments aren't awful (albeit maybe a bit boring) but yeah, not great. 3.5/10 (1.75/5)

Creepy vibes, weird instrumentals, jarring transitions. I get what the album was going for, and it isn't enjoyable to listen to. Each song has a theme and they all suck. The music is painful to the ears, and the vocals sound stagnant and bland throughout. I thought maybe the premise alone would keep it from a 1 star review, but the longer it went on, the clearer it became that wasn't the case. I certainly won't be going back to this anxiety inducing melodrama anytime soon.

Has some significance as the soundtrack to a romance of mine many moons ago that died on its ass, but that doesn't make me any more disposed to accept the dreaminess they peddle so insistently as anything more than a cloak for emotional inarticulacy they find too expedient to grow beyond and lethargy they're too comfortable disguising with bursts of what appears to be energy but only because they build to it from a near stationary starting point.

Well, no-one would accuse Portishead of making another album of dinner party music with this record. Bleak, claustrophobic, industrial, tuneless, vulnerable, anxious. Portishead always experimented with recording techniques that soundly bad; the scratchy vinyl, lo-fi aesthetic of Dummy became a sonic cliche as trip-hop exploded. It's like the doubled down with this album: 'You liked how crap that record sounded? Well, wrap your ears around this!" The aesthetic references are a little less obvious than the 60s vinyl, noir soundtrack vibe of Dummy. This is much more related to obscure industrial records of the late 70s and early 80s, which is not as easy to understand or approach. The torch-song vibe of Dummy (which I really loved) is replaced with a much more anxious and emotionally unstable atmosphere. Which is harder to connect with, let alone enjoy. It takes real work to listen to this record, and I would worry about the mental health of anyone who said this was their favourite album (or even favourite Portishead album). It is a record to admire rather than like.

The ~ - ~ t e n s i o n ~ - ~ make it stop.

This was the musical equivalent of prepping for a colonoscopy.

Do you remember that girl you noticed, The one in the city centre. She was dressed like Stevie Nicks meets Primark, In a crowed of 20 something olds. Shouting at a government with no general direction!. You walk up to this woman with your secret weapon of a medium Toffee latte from Costa. You pretend to care about what ever this collection of sandals are shouting about. You get woman’s name...it’s “Meadow” because why not. “Meadow” will go out for a drink but not for any old drink but for a drink to a little place she knows! . A little place with a band, a band filled with “Meadows” friends. You get to the underground bar literally..it’s a cellar in A 1960s St Katharine Docks ..Taylor Woodrow apartment redevelopment cellar. You sit with “Meadows” crossed legged on the floor, on a cushion, while an Ale in a jam jar is placed on the old cable drum table in front of us. As I start to feel out of place within the weed filled walls, Walls painted with that fidel castro silhouette all over ( because it’s 2009 and it’s original!...from the Gap ) I think even though “Meadows” looks the double of Mélanie Laurent, I can’t do this and her Ecology Degree I have to leave now before it’s too late. it’s too late. “Meadows” friends are on the turned upside down Biffa Bin stage. Celeste...Arlo & Ziggy are on!!! Celeste starts moaning like ET after too many drinks during a Quiet Man convention..Ziggy is kicking a broken wind chime & Arlo is banging his left nut on a burnt out old Tuna can with his woman’s Study’s degree. Just before I leave and go back to my natural resources consuming life, Drinking a Scotch and Back to searching for Tulisa from N-Dubs, “Meadows” informs me it is not about the music and it is about how it make you feel. I feel like Music is about the Music and I have to leave. This Albums makes me feel how you feel reading this about this album about how this Album makes me feel about Music or pretend to like Interstellar

A faixa inicial me surpreendeu, já que começa com uma fala em português. A banda é inglesa. Falava sobre a "regra dos três". Li que é de um capoeirista de Bristol. O som é incrível! A fala também. Várias experimentações sonoras. Rico demais.

Familiar with Portishead's early material but never got around to this album. Happy to say it holds up for me, this will enter my regular rotation.

i really like this damn sound. kind of free jazz pop music.

It's been two years since I listened to Dummy, and I recognized how much of a trip-hop classic that album was. Going into this record, however, made me realize two important aspects about Portishead. First, this group only records and puts out material when its members feel inspired to, which is why there was a decade-plus gap between their self-titled record and Third, and there hasn't been another since. Second, this band does not like to stay in one lane. Thus, with Third, Portishead largely foregoes the trip-hop sound of their earlier material in favor of an experimental, sample-based, smoldering krautrock sound. As someone who's enjoyed a good deal of sample-based music and krautrock on their album journey, I was on board with this. There is an abrasive, cinematic feel with the mixture of analog synthesizers, eclectic samples, Geoff Barrow's muffled mechanical drums, and Adrian Utley's strikingly jagged guitar riffs. The drum loop buildup of "Silence" that's abruptly cut into the lush, spacious acoustic strums of "Hunter" that give way to dense droning, the cold, delayed guitar effects that spiral around the mix in "Nylon Smile", the transition from a slow-burning folk piece into a downtrodden electronic bass loop on "The Rip", the rattling percussive noise opposite the eerie clarinet in the background of "Plastic", that relentless beat paired with the menacing guitar riff on "We Carry On", followed by an even more intensely pummeling rhythm on "Machine Gun"; there is a genuinely menacing atmosphere worked throughout this record. Very little reprieve can be found here, as even the jaunty ukulele interlude "Deep Water" and the slight return to a trip-hop sound on the closing track "Threads" have this markedly claustrophobic feel to their presentation. Even a cowbell can sound brooding on the melancholic art rock sway of "Magic Doors". I cannot deny how gripping and creative these abrasive experiments are laid bare, with such impeccable production from the band. The only aspect of Third that retains anything close to what came before is Beth Gibbons's vocals. She gave such an impressively haunting delivery throughout, as her lyrics reflect the mental struggle and frailty to match these spellbinding compositions. I can believe her cyclical view of relationships on "Hunter", her nervous breakdown on "Nylon Smile", her helplessness in the continued existence on "Plastic", and her fragile clinging to life on "We Carry On" and "Deep Water". Closing out with the full-blown uncertainty on "Threads" is quite the note to go out on. I knew Beth was an amazing voice from Dummy, but this feels even more theatrical with the musical palette here. Yeah, I do consider Third to be an astounding record. Portishead dug deeper to create a sinister yet commanding experimental album. They grew out of the trip-hop label with mastery.

Silence - 3.5 Hunter - 4.5/5 Nylon Smile - 4/5 The Rip - 4.5/5 Plastic - 3.5/5 We Carry On - 4/5 Deep Water - 4/5 Machine Gun - 4/5 Small - 4/5 Magic Doors - 3.5/5 Threads - 4/5

I love it💕💕🤟🤌🤌

Listens: 4 Standout Tracks: We Carry On, Machine Gun, Threads I absolutely adore and am intimately familiar with Portishead's first album Dummy, but strangely, I've never listened to either their self-titled sophomore album or Third. So, I was happy to see it come up on the List: new music to listen to from a band I have some familiarity with. I was initially... not impressed. It felt jarring. Foreign. Some of the trip-hop elements had been shed in favor of... I'm not sure what. Abrupt ends of songs. Noise. Discordant melodies. I wasn't going to give up though, because of how much I like Dummy. On listen number two, and with a little bit more focus on the music and what exactly is happening, some of the noise went away. We Carry On was no longer just loud beeping sounds, there was something underneath that. Same thing with Machine Gun. Things got even better with listen three. Now I am looking at track titles. Oh this is interesting. Deep Water is a nice break from the chaos. But there's still a lot of chaos. A lot of... what's the quality I am looking for... urgency? Severity? Panic? Like an animal trapped in a cage. Trying to break out. Bursting at the seams. All those things I initially said: Jarring, foreign, noise, discordant melodies. They are still there, but the underlying music elements have also been brought to the surface now too. And the trip-hop elements are still there too, but you need to listen closely. The crackle of vinyl. Hip-hop beats, etc. After four and a half listens, I will say, I like this, a lot.

I was originally upset this album wasn't a continuation of Dummy or Portishead but it really grew on me.

A really pleasant surprise this. The Rip and We Carry On are beautiful songs. I like Massive Attack, but always avoided Portishead (maybe because of the name, sounds like a toilet). Not everything works - Plastic is a bit rubbish, but enough does work. Spooky, atmospheric, haunting, and fresh. Am between a 4 and a 5, but I think I'll give in.

Absolutely love this album.

I completely forgot about portis

Fantastic album. Haunting and somber.

Talent at its finest

super chill hunter and the rip are bops

good songs

The off-kilter melodies and experimental song structures throughout the album are tied down with some of the best production and sound design I've ever heard. Probably a weird place to start with their discography but I'm very interested now to check out their earlier work. Favourites: Silence, The Rip, We Carry On, Machine Gun

7/10 Best songs: We Carry On, Magic Doors, Threads There is a lot to like about this album, but one thing that I have a lot of issues with is the fact that as an album it isn't particularly successful. You have these really vibey songs that have a terrific, ever-onward-pushing beat, and then... they abruptly end, and a new song begins. The whiplash just doesn't work for me. This is an album that very much should have been connected through short interstitial tracks, or by rearranging songs to match beats or instruments. But yeah, I do actually enjoy the album overall; the beats and music are excellent, and I appreciate the singer's ethereal voice (although it definitely worked better on Dummy than here). Where the band was doing trip hop during the 90s, in the 00s they shifted to a heavy bass/drum/house/almost industrial kind of feel (sort of Skinny Puppy/pre-Skrillex vibes). Does this album belong on this list? Ehhhh, probably not, but I like it so sure, why not.

219/1001 Portishead - Third Heard before? ✅ Revisit? ✅ Dark, experimental, brooding. The somewhat maligned album from Portishead, this is still great

Banger

I can’t decide if this excellent background music or if it’s terrible since I keep getting distracted trying to listen to the lyrics. The abrupt ending to song one also threw me for a loop. Digging this record though.

A leap to obscure instrumentation and the abandonment of simpler, catchier song structures bring out what’s consistent about Portishead: the spooky, indecisive and menacing mood, its embodiment in Beth Gibbons’ pre-war ghost voice, the Spaghetti Western and jazz embroidery, and sonic choices that are deliberately anachronistic, dated in a forcefully unsettling manner. Theremin sounds too, I suppose. The three year old is taken by “We Carry On”, repeating the mantra-like vocals without understanding. As I treasure many of the sounds and genres being détourned here, this is leng.

I’m on a train and some of the sounds in the album confused me bc I couldn’t tell if it was the song or the train. I think the combo of the instrumental and the voice is interesting and I like it.

Better than I remembered

Better than expected. A pleasant surprise with the vocals. Those melodies were cool.

It's certainly not a pretty album. It's creepy and unsettling in places, which isn't a bad thing. Third is definitely an original sounding album. Overall, I like the minimalism. Liked Songs Added: Silence

I might appreciate the moodiness a little more if there were more . . . musicality in the sound. 2.5?

Nice, moody vibes, but ultimately I preferred the melodies of the other Portishead album from this list (Dummy).

I liked this better than I thought I would. It's mostly enjoyable trance/ambient music with some other elements mixed in. They challenged themselves and their listeners and worked hard to make an interesting record. It worked.

Less a collection of songs than a cluster of interesting noises, some of which I enjoyed more than others. Sounds more like BEAK> than earlier Portishead.

I like its darkness and creativity, even if it still carries a lot of what I used to hold against Dummy back in the day : it rarely takes off and tends to stay locked in the same mood. Still, there are some nice guitar touches, and the atmosphere manages to move beyond the band’s original trip-hop roots, which keeps it from being just background music. Despite that evolution — and the 14 years between the two albums — you immediately know it’s Portishead. That’s one of the marks of the greats.

Heresy to say this, I’m sure, but I found this album much more interesting than Dummy. It’s not as monotonous and drone-y. The different stylistic twists and turns make for a more enjoyable record and there are some legitimately cool moments, like the doubled up synth solo at the end of Machine Gun. Portishead is still not my cup of tea, but this record gets closer than Dummy does.

I enjoyed it. Nothing stood out but it was soothing to listen to. Would give it another, more thorough listen, perhaps.

After how much I loved Dummy, I had been disappointed by their self-titled album in 1997 and was disappointed again when this came out in 2008. A couple of the songs on this album could have been the weakest track on Dummy, but wouldn't have been totally out of place on it, but most of these songs veer away completely from the things I loved about the band's first album. I guess they were different people with different musical leanings when they made this and so they didn't want to make chilled out, slightly funky smooth music. But I really like chilled out, slightly funky smooth music, which is why I liked their debut so much. This album has moments when you can hear the things I like about the group shining through, but it mostly just makes me anxious. I may be judging Third more harshly than I would otherwise because of how much I still enjoy Dummy, but thems the breaks Portishead. Go pull out your old Isaac Hayes records, find some funky but smooth samples, and give me what I want.

If you have never listened to Portishead (I had not), do NOT listen to this album first. It is ONLY for people who 1) already like Portishead and 2) are willing to listen to the album at least three times to let it “grow on them.” If you have not listened to Portishead before, go to Dummy as your first exposure. Guaranteed that if you do not like that, you will HATE this one. I started listening to this and it seemed that it was mostly hurting my ears, but every once in a while there was a flash of genius. So I went to Dummy and then listened to Third a few times. Third is really experimental and it is work to listen to it (and try to appreciate it). I am glad I listened to it (but more glad that it prompted me to listen to Dummy which is actually GOOD), but would not recommend it to anyone. On the other hand, it does get better everytime I listen to it - I could see how someone might even rank this as 5 stars after listening to it enough times. Hard for me to know what to put down here - after three listens, it has gone from 1 star to 2 stars... So I am just putting down 2 stars and thinking I might come back and rerate if I keep listening to it. Best songs: The Rip, Machine Gun, Magic Doors, Threads.

Oh Jesus, I hated this. Like, I get what they thought they were doing. But it was truly unpleasant to listen to. Miss the original style. This was aggressively not that.

Great voice and music is a bit different. Indie. Didn't mind it, just wasn't my type of music.

I m tired ...sorry

not my kinda thing tbh...

Meh. DNF. Some cool sounds but not worth slogging through.

Didn’t enjoy the vibes of this one. Not my thing.

The singer sounds like a ghost Sounds like the type of music you'd hear coming from a dodgy nightclub. No thanks - avoid 2 ⭐️

Painful. At some points, genuinely painful. Dummy was one of the 90s best albums. Turns out I can’t say I like Portishead anymore.

Second album by Portishead. This one is much more depressing. Like the soundtrack to a movie where everyone dies, including the dog. Some interesting sounds but I won’t listen again.

Unerträglich

2/10 - I absolutely despised this album. It was just so off putting the entire time. I also listened to it while quite stressed so that definitely did not help. There were no songs that I enjoyed listening too and just wanted it to end.

terrible. what was that garbage.

Not for me

BAD.

1.5

Album: Third Artist: Portishead Year: 2008 Album #: 300 (264 rated) first impressions: I feel like this is supposed to be an influential album and artist so...I was looking forward to it, but now I'm looking forward to the end. This just seems like if Radiohead decided to make songs without traditional structure and more synths and truly grating, mewing vocals. after listening through: the song "Plastic" is honestly one of the worst tracks I've listened to as part of this project; "Deep Water" is like, the origin story of the awful twee ukelele hiphop YouTube covers of the early 2010s? The rest is like, the Social Network Soundtrack mashed up with Kid A, but replaced with the vocals of the woman who sings at 8 am mass at my parents' church. post-reading reviews/wiki: ...did I listen to the same album people love? I guess I really just don't like Trip Hop. recommended for: someone who hates melody in their music and just wants.. slightly unpleasant noise.

Um

Reminded my Why I don’t like Portishead…

I never really knew why I never got into Portishead back in the day. Now I know why. I just could not get into this at all.

Strange and electronic, and not for me. Felt like it was tracks by Massive Attack but under LSD. Not much in the way of replay for me, and definitely not for my listening pleasure

Constant dissonance, depressive soft spoken and sometimes drifting out of key. Minor differences between songs. If you enjoy that, this is for you. But this was not for me.

Yeah this ain’t it

Discordant and tuneless. How the mighty fallen

Not a fan

Not my thing. At all. *Yawns*

Every song seems like a song that’s not even close to being done. Her vocals seem like placeholders and instrumental sections go on for too long with not enough change.

I never listened to this third album. Never knew it existed. I wasn't missing much. Don't like it.

Did not enjoy.

no

Gear: ZMF Auteur Classic LTD Shedua Artwork: 🅿️3️⃣🟦 Production: ♨️🥾💦 Music: 🔮💀🖤 Rating: 🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑/5

I’m late to Portishead but so far I love what I hear 😊

Det er ret imponerende at have 2 albums på listen når man kun har udgivet 3 albums i hele sin karriere. Hvor Portishead i 90erne var banebrydende medskabere af Trip Hop, så er de 11 år efter deres senest album tilbage med en helt anden lyd. Det er stadig elektronisk, men også post-punket, krautrocket og filmisk i sit udtryk. Væk er scratching og de klassiske Hip Hop bests. Nu er lyden intenst kuldegysende. Kun Beth Gibbons stemme trækker tråde tilbage til de tidligere albums. Denne gang lyder hun mere forpint end nogenside før.

J'avais jamais écouté cet album.

J'avoue que j'y allais à reculons... je suis pas toujours dans le mood trip-hop. Mais wow, ces musiciens là sont vraiment talentueux. Et puisent dans un répertoire extrêmement large. Il y a des parties hard rock (guits disto avec un tone plutôt le fun), des parties groovy qui vont même jusqu'à me faire penser à The Doors, de l'électro-acoustique, une toune de ukulele folk qui détonne franchement avec le ton général de l'album MAIS avec des harmonies vraiment spaces dans les fins de phrase qui fait que ça passe. La voix de la chanteuse est superbe, je me répète comme dans Dummy.

Plus glauque et dark encore que dummy? Ça me parle

Grim, bleak, and moody. As Beautiful as ever. I love Portishead.

Maestros de la melancolía oscura

Despite being a huge fan of Dummy, I had not (somewhat surprisingly) listened to this before. It's quite different from Dummy, but amazing in its own right. Among other highlights i really liked the moment about half way through The Rip when the arpeggiated synth comes in. I feel like I might listen to this album obsessively over the next week or so.

cool! 5/5

Tremendo me parece poco calificativo para este álbum. Portishead tienen su hueco en la historia de la música por convertirse en los reyes del trip hop, aunque en este tercer álbum se permiten mezclar otros estilos y hacerse más versátiles. Lo que no cambia es la presencia totalmente avasalladora de Beth Gibbons, desde su aparente fragilidad, que en un momento te destroza las entrañas con l rotundidad de su quejumbrosa voz. Si los has visto en directo no te sorprenderá esa sensación. Su música es todo un viaje, a veces incómodo, pero siempre preñado de verdad y de dolor. "The Rip" te estremece hasta la médula, al igual que "Threads". Cada tema es una excursion al fondo de tu alma. Y "Machine Gun" es... hay que escucharla, porque no thay manera de describirla. Notas cada disparo en tu estómago. Un 10 de 10.

This would have been even more awesome in October, but this will do. The Rip and We Carry On are two of the most distinctive and engaging songs I've encountered on this ride. Not a definitive look into what Portishead is known for, but one that made me turn my head (9/10, 5/5 on this scale)

462/1089 - This album is so creepy and cool. Songs stop abruptly, sharp and mechanical percussion contrasting with Beth Gibbon's unique legato phrase. Trading their noire/trip-hop sound for a krautrock/post-industrial sound. I really hope they have another album in them and I hope it sounds nothing like this, just like Third sounds nothing like Self-titled or Dummy.

Dark and disturbing - I love this. The album feels like it should have been the soundtrack to any of these movies from the 1920's, Metropolis, Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Portishead has not left much of an impression on me in my previous encounters with their music. It always seemed like something I could respect but wasn’t really for me. I might have been impatient. This album starts off interesting enough, but by the time The Rip segues into the electronic groove in its 2nd half I’m completely in. Beth Gibbons’ vocals add a beautiful fragility… sometimes matching the music, other times acting as its counterpoint. Plastic continues the strongest stretch of the album… leading to We Carry On, which might be my favorite track here. The variety of sounds throughout the record keep me interested and are particularly mesmerizing in this song. I love how the sparse ukulele track, Deep Water, leads right into the aggressive electronic bombast of Machine Gun. The sequencing of tracks on this record is such a strength, as are the sonic shifts within each song. It makes for so many memorable moments. “Third” is an album I felt needed multiple listens to even begin to rate it, and I’m sure more listens will continue to reveal more hidden treasures within. I’m looking forward to reevaluating Portishead’s other music and continuing to build my appreciation for this masterpiece too.

Portishead on itself it's a legendary band in the Trip-hop space. They are easily one of the most recognizable faces, and they have a decent discography that's interesting in how they only released music when they wanted. That's remarkable due to the high quality of all of their albums and the strong aura and energy that contains their music. It's dark. That's the best word, but more than that, the nocturnal, dreamy, loopy, sad and nostalgic vibes that Trip-hop usually has, is something that's well represented in their 3 albums. The interesting part to me, is how these 3 albums (and their perfect live) despite being trip-hop adjacent albums, are different and unique in its own ways. In short, the first is a quasi-perfect definition of what is a trip-hop album. The second, is most grimey, noisy, obscure and, I must say, alien in some way. While the first was very cohesive, this second one feels expansive and an exploration contained to what you could expect from them. And there's the third. I must confess that the first time I heard it, I didn't like it. Its such a big departure from everything that was done until this point that felt jarring and uncomfortable listening to it. But that's the crux of it: while the first two albums were quite sad and nostalgic, this one is another level. In a second listen, with a better pair of headphones and more concentration I realized that this album is the logical conclusion of what they were doing before. It's a sad, intense, discordant and heavy album. But at the same time, is based on loops, samples, minimalistic in some parts and has the haunting voice of Beth Gibbons, similarly to the previous 2. In some way, if someone asked what could Portishead say after more than 10 years, this is the logical answer: nothing gets better. The pain, the longing, the nostalgia, all of that remains. And some of it gets worse. I do not think this album is something accessible and its totally understandable if someone outright dislikes and hates it. It has such a dark vibe, that at some point i feel it has somewhat of a spiritually negative connotation. But, I think, that it's an honest and compelling artistic work, and that I don't see how the repetition of the same style and thoughts of the first 2 albums would be artistically good. And even if I don't like it that much for casual listening, I find it essentially, without flaw. That's why Portishead is so well regarded, I think.