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February 23, 2005
Mercy Savage
Portishead - Humming (Live at Roseland Ballroom)
[Sorry for the late update. Snow + a lunch meeting have made for a long day. But that's neither here nor there.]
Portishead were one of my favorite bands, back in the halcyon days of the late 90s. And it's not that I ever stopped liking them, but they just sort of disappeared (they are like Radiohead to the Nth degree when it comes to lag-time between albums), and there was no news about what they were doing. 8 years since their last studio album, people. That is a long goddamn time.
Then, just last month, comes news that Portishead are playing live shows for a tsunami victims benefit, in Bristol UK, and are going to start working on their third LP, to be released later this year. It'll be interesting to see how this new material turns out, if it'll have the same hip-hop/jazzy/spy movie soundtrack feel that the old songs do.
'Humming', the studio track, is from their second LP, "Portishead", released in 1997. This version though is taken from the incomparable live disc, "PNYC", which came out in '98, if I remember correctly. It starts out with what sounds like a theremin and violins, and some carefully placed horn accents. Two full minutes in, the beats start. And then the scratching. Beth Gibbons unleashes her utterly gorgeous voice, sounding almost confessional. At about the 4:40 mark, there's a swell of strings and horns, and Beth questions her resolve- then goes on to quiver, "it's been so long/that I can't be sure/and it's been so wrong right now/so wrong".
At one point, I was convinced that there was no better band on the planet than Portishead. So it's an understatement when I say that I am looking forward to their new album. You can purchase "PNYC" from the kind folks over at l'Amazon.
Posted by matt at February 23, 2005 09:02 PM
Comments
woah. a 3rd LP? that makes my pre-spring-break, exam-riddled midweek.
one time I downloaded an album called "Empathy" that was supposedly done by Portishead. Boy was I excited, until I realized it wasn't Beth Gibbons, but some Tori Amos impersonator with a Lamb-sounding backup.
But that's what I get for stealing music.
Posted by: ms. holt at March 2, 2005 05:16 PM
Thanks for the comment, Ms. Holt. That reminds me of something similar- a while ago there was an album called 'Pearl' floating around on Napster or whatever, and it was labeled as the 3rd P-head album. Turned out it was some weirdo band from Russia called Mandelay who had purposefully leaked their album under the Portishead name. The band [Portihead] actually had to issue a warning/denial on their website.
Posted by: Kevin at March 3, 2005 12:05 PM
Yeah, that "Empathy" album i pinched turned out to be Mandelay. I thought it was shoddy labelling; I didn't realize the confusion was intentional.
Posted by: ms. holt at March 9, 2005 02:37 PM
Yeah, kind of a weird thing to do, right? Although supposedly it happens a lot- mostly small-time bands trying to get more exposure.
Posted by: Kevin at March 11, 2005 09:11 AM