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"Dummy"
by Portishead
By Webjockey Billsbillsbills
Check out Webjockey Billsbillsbills' Rifflist:
Portishead
This 1994 full-length debut from Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and Adrian Utley is about as iconic as it gets for trip-hop fans. Well, maybe Blue Lines, Massive Attack's 1991 groundbreaking debut could stand up to Dummy. But as it turns out, Barrow was tight with Massive Attack emcee and producer Tricky, and behind some of the programming on Blue Lines. So Bristol, England in the early 1990s was the nest that would incubate a massively popular downtempo genre influential to everyone from Bjork to Gnarls Barkley.
Dummy is 11 tracks of a beautiful mix of sorrow and spite, funk and jazz, singing and snarling with Gibbons' voice and Barrow's turn-tablism front and center. There are moments when it's hard to believe three people are responsible for the music delivered here. Barrow is primarily responsible for the horn and string arrangements, drawing from rare '60s and '70s vinyl to create an alluringly complex and lush sound.
"Mysterons," the album opener, is a perfect introduction to their special brand of trip-hop: a funky snare drum roll over a slow backbeat, a spare and simple jazz riff climb and descent, with Gibbons repetitively crooning "Did you really want." It's the kind of magic followers like Beth Orton, UNKLE and DJ Shadow have tried to conjure.
Most people have heard the startling second track on the album, "Sour Times," whether they'd recognize it as a Portishead song or not. Gibbons' voice, the emotional potency heavy in Barrow's pacing and beats, and Utley's haunting guitar work have shown up on numerous movie soundtracks such as '95s Assassins starring Sly Stallone and Julianne Moore. The famous "Sour Times" chorus "Cos nobody loves me / It's true / Not like you do" is indicative of the dark lyrical tone dripping from most of the tracks here. Gibbons doesn't do lovey-dovey optimism that well.
Today, a visit to Dummy would probably spawn some mystifying questions: Firstly, this was 1994? Where are they now? A band as mysterious as their sound, Portishead commonly shuns the media spotlight, refusing most interview requests. On indefinite hiatus since their 1998 live release, PNYC, Portishead has always kept us waiting in anticipation. Thankfully, we have their third full-length record, Third, to get excited about. It hits shelves on April 14. Two weeks later they will headline Coachella. Portishead is back in the spotlight after sheepishly inching their way under the heat 14 years ago with their successful debut.
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