FEATURE:
It’s a Fire
Portishead’s Dummy at Thirty
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ONE of the greatest albums…
of the 1990s celebrates a big anniversary next month. Released on 22nd August, 1994, it went on to win the 1995 Mercury Prize. That album is Portishead’s Dummy. Their amazing and timeless debut, it ranks alongside the best debuts ever. It is amazing how few articles there are about Dummy and its story. Given that it is such a huge and acclaimed album, one would think there would be more! I will come to some reviews soon. I want to start off by highlighting some features that have been written about Dummy. Classic Album Sundays told the story and gave some history about the epic and hugely original Dummy:
“Portishead released their first album, “Dummy”, in 1994. At the time their music did not sound like much else out there although it did draw upon the Bristol sound popularised by The Wild Bunch and Massive Attack. However, Portishead pushed the sound further with the sultry, folky vocal style of singer Beth Gibbons and breakologist Geoff Barrow’s unique sampling choices.
Trip Hop
In the mid-eighties in Bristol The Wild Bunch sound system started to fuse together hip hop, house, soul, R&B, reggae, ambient and jazz at their events. Later three of the members went on to form Massive Attack and drew together these influences with their debut album “Blue Lines”. The label Mo’Wax were inspired by the sound and in 1994 Mixmag journo Andy Pemberton reviewed Mo’Wax artists R.P.M. and DJ Shadow and coined the term “Trip Hop”. The sound was then an omniscient presence in a host of backroom club lounges and dinner parties.
Crossover
Later that same year, Bristol act Portishead’s debut album “Dummy” pushed the sound further in yet another direction as Gibbon’s vocal style lent more toward folk rather than soul. Barrow also pushed the envelope with his sampling choices which included jazz, soundtracks and Berlin cabaret songs. Their distinctive blend enabled them cross over from a club fanbase to an indie audience which helped them win the coveted Mercury Music Prize. It most likely encouraged Massive Attack to explore new territories on their subsequent albums and it has since helped set the stage for contemporary acts like The xx.
Hip Hop
In an interview from 1997, Barrow explained how Portishead were massively influenced by American Hip Hop: ” I was in rock and could have stayed with the drums and stuff, but when hip-hop first hit suburban England, it kind of took over and was massively exciting. It was a real thing you could get into. It’s difficult to describe, but to a younger generation of sixteen-year-old kids it was that you wouldn’t go out and have a fight; you’d go out and dance against each other. We were like, ‘Well, what the hell?'”
To Kill a Dead Man
The cover of “Dummy” features a still from a short film made by Portishead called “To Kill a Dead Man”. It is an eleven minute black and white movie about an assassination which stars and is scored by the band. Although he appreciated the opportunities that ensued from doing the film, Geoff Barrow was later disappointed by film itself, “When I look at ‘To Kill a Dead Man’, I can’t stand it. I think it was a dreadful piece of film. Basically, it was done so that we could write some film music. Not to put down anyone involved with the film, but we should have done it with pure images, rather than having us in it. It was misunderstood, what we wanted to get out of it. It created an image, and the whole idea was for it not to”.
In 2017, XS Noize wrote about Dummy. I am not going to quote the entire feature, though it is wonderful piece that offers up a lot of insight into Portishead’s debut. I first heard it not long after it came out in 1994. It has been with me ever since. The more I listen to it the more I get:
“Portishead was formed in 1991 and was named for the nearby town eight miles away. Initially the band was formed as a duo with Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons. Adrian Utley who was initially credited as a co producer on “Dummy” would become an official member after the debut making them a trio. They would eventually add as a fourth member David McDonald who had been the engineer on “Dummy” along with session drummer Clive Deamer also frequently orbiting in their atmosphere.
“Dummy” would be recorded between 1993 and 1994 at State of Art and Coach House Studios in Bristol. There were additional musicians used to flesh out the sound of the recording, most prominently drummer Clive Deamer. During the period in the studio the band would invent their own way of creating music, mixing master musicianship, technology and mood. Barrow, Deamer and Utley would jam in the studio, then engineer the tunes onto a 24 track tape, feed it back through sequencers and press the sounds on vinyl to manipulate them even further. From there Beth Gibbons’ would spin her alchemy providing a center for the music; adding sorrow, a certain knowingness, allure and grimness all in their turn. She had the singular ability to morph her performance vocally into whatever the sonics demanded producing a compelling allure. The songs that came out of this process were unique. The tracks would harken to the ambiance of Bristol, an ambiguous neon lit form reflected in dark puddles of ennui.
There was little sense of warning in advance of Portishead’s emergence. They had not gigged before the “Dummy” release and were not operating like a traditional band in any sense of the definition. The band was positively allergic to press coverage but somehow managed to be revered critically and become commercially successful. “Dummy” produced three singles “Numb, Sour Times, and Glory Box” all of which would climb the charts. “Dummy” would win a Mercury Music Prize in 1995. It would go to #2 on the UK Album Charts, reach #5 on the Alternative Charts in the States, and be certified gold in 1997. The album would go on to sell 2 million copies and counting and be certified double Platinum. That is an awfully good showing for an album that was the definition of Alternative; weaving together strands of Blues, Funk, and Hip Hop infusing them with icy ennui and a blast of cool. ‘Dummy” is filled with the disquieting brilliance of claustrophobia, emotional numbness and dark dread. When all is said and done, “Dummy” is cited as one of the greatest Trip Hop albums to date and a definitive milestone for the genre.
Dummy opens with “Mysterons” which is like music created for a Noir film yet to be made. The dreamy distorted accompaniment is loaded with spectacular drums, scratch effects and Gibbon’s emotional keening pleas. Those pleas come forth like a letting loose of emotions in a most arresting non British way. There is a steady “stream of consciousness” flow that speaks to the suppression to the unconscious of various crimes and violations. “Inside your pretending, crimes have been swept aside, somewhere where they can forget”. All the while the underlying motivations and intents are judged. “Mysterons” is a spectacular opener just giving a taste of what is to follow.
Probably the best know song of the release; “Sour Times” is like a drug infecting the senses with the ennui of forlorn lust and desire. In an era of sampling, Portishead provided seamless samplings in this case from; Lalo Schifrin, Otis Turner and Henry Brooks. But the track is not just about the samples and more about the samples blending in to enhance the fantastic James Bondesque guitar, hurdy gurdy/balalaika effects and a bass that nails the song. There is an ethereal existential ethos to the lyrics, “end the vows, no need to lie, enjoy, take a ride, take a shot now…cause nobody love me, it’s true, not like you do.” Gibbons delivers a spot on come hither coyness that heightens the sensuous allure making the sexual potency of the track palpable. “Sour Times” is a simply gorgeous concoction and it is easy to understand why it lodged in the public’s ear.
“Strangers” is delicious quintessential Portishead. It is suave and sophisticated all the while conveying isolation and individuality. The jazzy intro head fakes for a moment then breaks out into an outrageous blend of Trip Hop sound with jaw dropping percussion. Gibbons’ knowing vocal delivery is enchanting as she lays out the lyrical gems, “Did you realize, no one can see inside your view, did you realize, for why this sight belongs to you.” Here is a song that beckons to be loved. “It Could Be Sweet” is a torch song with that special proprietary blend of cool thrown into the mix. Presented is an exhibition of restraint and minimalism with simple percussive effects and a light touch producing a wondrous work. The jazz blend brings out the evocative feel of Gibbons’ vocal as it takes front and center. The lyrics play on the idea of what ifs. What if that one thing could be added or taken away to make something perfect or sweet? Identified is that the problem is all too often with ourselves, our fear and cowardice, “You don’t get something for nothing, turn now; mmmm you gotta try a little harder.”
The double whammy of “Wandering Star” resides in the great marriage of insistent bass and drums producing that plodding effect that is a beat line to die for. Additionally stellar is the horn usage and that diddle of a guitar riff. Numerous samplings were also utilized to perfect the song, with the sum being greater than any one part on the instrumentation. The topic was depression and how its monotony descends like a cloud blocking out all the joy of living, “Please could you stay awhile to share my grief for it’s such a lovely day to have to always feel this way.” The track is probably one of my favorites of the release.
“It’s a Fire” contains some fantastic droning keyboards and again marries many genres. It begins like a Kate Bush ballad and then slides into a funky Trip Hop testimonial with gospel stylings. There is great pathos as the lyrics consider whether or not life is some kind of great cosmic joke. “Cos this life is a farce, I can’t breathe through this mask like a fool.” In the end the realization is that humanity and the individual persevere no matter how foolish that may seem. From the questioning of life’s intent the song “Numb” moves on to examining loneliness and isolation. Conveyed is a feeling of being lost in a crowd, unable to relate or feel. Gibbons’ delivery is charged with sexual electricity that attempts to mask the true sadness of the lyric and her vulnerability. “Try to reveal what I could feel but this loneliness it just won’t leave me alone”. The alluring Trip Hop beat and Hammond organ along side that rain drop drum create a fantastic backdrop for the vocals to sail overtop. For all of song’s outward armor it puts on display the soulful nakedness of the inner person.
“Roads” is the song that most reflects Massive Attack’s influences. There is an unmade movie somewhere that belongs to this song. The wavery intro keyboards produce the moody panorama for the track. Many of the same elements found in the other tracks are arranged beautifully to make for a truly outstanding selection. The soaring strings drip with emotions as Gibbons gives what in my opinion is her most touching vocal performance of the release. Addressed is the fight within ourselves and the overall fight for civilization; “I got nobody on my side and surely that ain’t right… oh, can’t anybody see we got a war to fight.” It is an expansive and ever revealing song that lodges into your soul not letting go.
In hindsight what really wows on “Dummy” is the sustained freshness and consistent quality of the tracks. There is no settling for the subpar as “Pedestal” again stuns. Its brilliant beats throb along with the sly cymbal work making for a sinuous track that is oh so appealing. The lyrics show someone placed on a pedestal or is it a pillory platform alone and abandoned to the whims of judgment and ridicule with nowhere to hide, “You abandoned me how I suffer, ridicule breathes a sigh”. As to Gibbons’ presentation, her stilted delivery is cunningly apt when compared to the expected over emoting that would be the usual approach. Beautifully placed horns add the icing on this magnificent creation, I hate for this song to end”.
I am going to finish with a feature from The Guardian. In 2019, they interviewed Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley about how the album came together. It is a majestic and hugely affecting album that is like nothing else. Even if some say that Dummy is not Portishead’s absolute peak, few can argue against its importance and impact. Considered one of the best albums of the 1990s and ever, you need to hear Dummy. Ahead of its thirtieth anniversary, I hope that more people write about the immaculate masterpiece:
“When the two men met, Barrow was a ponytailed 19-year-old making demos with the 26-year-old Gibbons at the city’s Coach House Studios (Barrow and Gibbons had met at an Enterprise Allowance training day at the dole office in 1990: “She was a grown-up in my eyes,” he says). Utley was 34, a bored jazz session guitarist finishing yet another job in a room downstairs. “And I remember somebody opening the door upstairs and me hearing It Could Be Sweet [one of the first tracks written for Dummy]. I was all, ‘Fuck me, what is that?’ Just hearing the sub-bass and Beth’s voice – it was unbelievable. Like a whole new world that was really exciting and vital.”
The three bonded quickly. Utley mined Barrow for his knowledge of sampling (“Tell me everything! How are they making that Queen track go on and off?”), while Utley’s collection of TV-recorded spy films introduced his bandmates to unusual sounds from instruments such as cimbaloms and theremins. “It was a really exciting time, because there was this amalgamation of ideas and a lifetime of separate discovery with all of us. And the fact that we brought it to each other…” Utley beams. “It was like a new love.”
Barrow and Gibbons’s first ideas for songs had been recorded in Neneh Cherry’s kitchen in London (Barrow had been hired by Cherry’s husband and manager, Cameron McVey, to work on her second album, Homebrew, on which he co-wrote and co-produced the song Somedays; McVey spotted Barrow’s talent when he worked as a trainee tape operator on Massive Attack’s groundbreaking 1991 album Blue Lines). That working relationship had fallen apart. Barrow’s mental health had also declined. “I was in a terrible place. Through the Gulf war, I was really quite sick, physically and mentally. Mental stuff. I thought the war was the end of the world. I’d never had a breakdown before – I think it was just the pressure of the Portishead stuff – I didn’t know I was having it. And no one ever talked to me about mental health in any way.” “You’re able to hide mental health issues within the music industry,” Utley chips in. “It’s completely acceptable to be a little bit crazy, drink too much or take too many drugs. It’s like: ‘Yeah, man, he was fucked last night’. No one asks, ‘why was he fucked?’ I think that ignorance has been going on for ever.”
Dummy motored on after Portishead, now a trio, moved to the Bristol district of Easton to record. “That was grim too,” Barrow laughs. “The only place to eat was Iceland or this horrible pub called Granny’s where your beans and chips would arrive with Granny’s thumb in it.” The lush soundscapes of Dummy rose from that bleakness. “But the process is never romantic, is it?” Barrow continues. “Listen to how New Order made their first records, or whoever, and it’s always going to be the same story. You’re in some shithole somewhere that you’ve made into something OK.”
Bristol has changed since then, but not in a good way, the men say. Homelessness and drugs problems are even bigger issues. “Plus you go somewhere like St Pauls – which was very much a community of Caribbean people – and there’s some posh student in a onesie,” Utley says. “Really privileged kids that have taken that area over.” In 2017, Bristol was named the most desirable British city to live in by one survey, but also the most racially segregated by another. Its past has always been unpleasantly divided, says Barrow, citing a book called A Darker History of Bristol, which recounts its history with slavery. “And still, lots of Bristol people only give a fuck about themselves,” he adds. “But there’s been an anti-establishment arts scene here too, for years, with a massive tongue in its cheek. It was there in the Pop Group, Smith and Mighty, the Wild Bunch, and Banksy [Barrow was music supervisor for Banksy’s 2010 exhibition, Exit Through the Gift Shop]. It’s always found itself.” A note of hope, then? He shrugs, still unsure.
Portishead have always been a political band on their own terms. A quote from Jo Cox (“We have far more in common than that which divides us”) was featured in their 2016 video for SOS; it still sits on their website’s landing page. Barrow and Utley also rant about Brexit, Trump and the Tories on Twitter feeds constantly; we meet four days after the new PM arrives, which Barrow calls “an absolute fucking disaster” (he later retweets Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to stop a no-deal Brexit).
Utley also mentions Gibbons’s lyrics being “very visceral and political” about gender and the politics of relationships, despite their abstract nature. He recalls Gibbons pointed out a “mansplaining” incident in a restaurant, and it reflecting one of her songs (they don’t mention the song, adding they don’t discuss her lyrics in detail). Barrow also recalls sexist record company A&Rs from their early days. “This real meat and veg vibe. Men going: ‘What’s this moaning bird on about?’”
By winter 1994, Dummy was everywhere. And in January it went to No 3 in the charts, behind Celine Dion and the Beautiful South. Sour Times and Glory Box became top 15 singles. Then came the Mercury win, at which Barrow ranted about prizes being preposterous (“I still agree with that”). He also recalls his mum being cross with Paul Morley (“he’d dissed us a bit”) and chatting amiably to Noel Gallagher. “I remember thinking, Oh, most musicians are dead normal. Or at least as mad as you.”
Barrow and Utley’s main beef is that Dummy is remembered as a sexy, chillout record in the UK. “When people say that, I find it bizarre.” He says Portishead had far more in common with Nirvana than any dance or chillout acts. “I know that sounds ridiculous – but they also had these visceral chord changes, never being harmonically correct.” He has a theory though: that the dance culture that happened in Britain didn’t happen elsewhere on the same scale, “so when everyone was partying and taking pills and coming down, the attitudes were different.” Portishead are just seen as a vocal-led band elsewhere, he adds, with Gibbons as a Polly Harvey or Hope Sandoval figure. They’re huge in France, Switzerland and the US, where Third entered the charts at No 7, and in Latin America: they played to 80,000 in Mexico City. Despite their recent silence, every Portishead musician remains busy. Barrow makes film scores with composer Ben Salisbury (his latest for the Octavia Spencer and Naomi Watts film Luce, is released in the UK this November) and “really loves” playing live with his Krautrock-influenced band Beak. Utley has made a soundtrack with artist Gillian Wearing for a George Eliot documentary recently, worked on Anna Calvi’s latest LP, and with the Paraorchestra of Great Britain on several projects.
They’re still passionate about new music. Both fathers, they like “that great gothy woman the kids like who makes stuff on Logic on her laptop” (we work out it’s Billie Eilish), James Holden, Idles, Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sharon Van Etten (Barrow), Kate Tempest, Thurston Moore and Perfume Genius (Utley). Things they don’t like include composer Nils Frahm, about whom they rant for five hilarious minutes. Barrow: “He’ll change his scarf half way through to prove how important he is.” Utley: “He’s grade 3 piano. He’s fucking Richard Clayderman.”
That joyous railing against everyone else, that sticking to one’s guns, makes you wish for Portishead to return as a musical entity even sooner. Utley confirms he was the last to see Gibbons: “The other week for lunch. It was great. We slagged everything off!” Will we see them back together soon? The men look at each other for a moment too long – moments later, as I start to leave, they’re talking about the photographs again. “It’s all up in the air, really,” Utley says. “If the wind blows hard enough, you never know”.
I am going to end with a couple of reviews. In 2010, BBC recognised how Dummy is one of the best debut albums of the 1990s. No doubt about that. In a month where titanic debuts from the likes of Jeff Buckey and Oasis were released, Portishead’s introduction stood out:
“Portishead’s Mercury Prize-winning debut takes just seconds to spook its audience. An eerie drone, scratches that sound like alien chatter, a snapping beat that cracks with hip hop attitude but treads cautiously for fear of stepping on a crack and tumbling into whatever unholy chasm music like this is capable of opening. Mysterons’ title is apt – named after the Martian race from Captain Scarlett, it’s an emission from a faraway planet of secrets and shadows. It opens the group’s singular soundworld in a way that’s exquisitely discomforting.
True, the constituents that make up much of this collection are easily traced – back to dub, to soul, and especially to hip hop; the array of scratch effects, loops and samples (the best being the slurry use of Johnnie Ray’s version of I’ll Never Fall in Love Again, on Biscuit) betraying its makers’ affections for very terrestrial traits. But it’s the manner in which the pieces come together that makes Dummy special to this day. While 16 years old, it sounds remarkably fresh – perhaps because its minimalist design has been recently returned to the Mercury winners circle by The xx; perhaps because the mixture of this backdrop with the vocals of Beth Gibbons remains one of pop music’s most compelling combinations.
While producer Geoff Barrow is the heart of Dummy, and Adrian Utley another just-as-vital organ, the soul is Gibbons. It’s her presence that made Portishead truly stand out from the post-Blue Lines crowd, a group of artists loosely categorised as trip hop. It’s important not to exaggerate her role in taking the group from their West Country roots to worldwide acclaim, to the detriment of her bandmates, but her voice – a ghostly, fractured wail that sounds as if it’s crept from an Edwardian closet that’s been sealed since 1902 – plays a vital part in ensuring this set side-steps convention. Hers is a voice that can’t be copied, coming from the back of her mouth, shaped by throat rather than tongue and lips; it creaks and moans like Mary Celeste decking, every bit as shivers-down-the-spine inducing as Barrow’s off-kilter turntable work and unsettling electronics.
And it’s not Gibbons’ words that do the damage – it’s how they’re said. Roads – the sort of contemporary masterpiece that in a parallel universe is being wheeled out on The X Factor and reducing Simon Cowell to floods of tears – is the best example of how Gibbons’ technique surpasses any lyrical content. The tone is familiar, an unspecified collapse, potential or assured but surely emotional, is spoken of; but the way she signs off a repeated line with a certain pronunciation of "wrong" is utterly arresting. It’s a shapeless sigh of beaten-down anguish, and there’s more heartache and pain in this single second than a whole rack of by-the-book balladeers.
Imitators have come and gone, but no act has reproduced the disquieting magnificence conjured here except Portishead themselves. The band’s next album, an eponymous effort of 1997, distanced them from the coffee tables that (wholly unexpectedly) had made room for Dummy; to some it’s a superior listen, though a lot colder and harder than its predecessor. And their overdue comeback of 2008, Third, embraced krautrock motifs to take an established sound into a new dimension. But to many, Dummy is the group’s defining work – and even if you disagree with that, what can’t be doubted is that this is one of the greatest debuts of the 1990s”.
I am going to wrap up with this review from Pitchfork. The final parts of it. In their 2017 review, Pitchfork stated how Portishead created their own virtuosity and aura. A combination of technology, musicianship and passion:
“Their sense of contrast is particularly noticeable in the album’s rhythms. Barrow’s lickety-split vinyl scratching helps counterbalance the uniformly sluggish tempos, but the real action is in their breakbeats. In “Mysterons,” the looped snare rolls sound like a steel trap snapping shut and being pried back open in quick succession. The “Sour Times” beat resembles James Brown’s iconic “Funky Drummer” break, but transposed for a planet with only half of Earth’s gravity. “Wandering Star” and “Numb,” on the other hand, push forward as though running underwater, every beat a struggle against an overwhelming force. Track after track, the album toggles between crisp steppers and deadweight friction, between ping-ponging ricochets and Sisyphus’ last stand.
This groove was their invention, and theirs alone. Unlike most of their peers, Portishead didn’t rely on the same hoary Ultimate Breaks and Beats bootlegs that fueled the majority of the era’s club tracks. Their music may sound like the work of a couple of obsessive vinyl connoisseurs, but the irony is that they made most of it themselves. Some musicians speak of soundtracks to imaginary films; they created an imaginary soundtrack to use as their source material. Assisted by the drummer Clive Deamer, Barrow and Utley would jam in the studio, creating their own approximations of the ’60s music that inspired them. Once they had their songs engineered on 24-track tape, they’d take the final product and feed it back into their samplers; some material they even pressed onto vinyl dubplates, to manipulate the way a hip-hop producer would cut up breakbeats. Not quite a band, hardly a strictly electronic project, they had to invent their own kind of virtuosity, one that encompassed musicianship, technology, and aura. “It’s the air around the thing,” Barrow told The Wire. “What we are trying to do is create this air, this atmosphere: It’s the stuff that’s in between the hi-hat and the snare that you can’t hear, but if it wasn’t there you would notice it, it would be wrong.”
This air was the medium through which Gibbons’ voice soared. Would Portishead have been one-tenth the band they turned out to be had Barrow and Utley contented themselves with instrumentals, or hired session singers to lend a soulful patina at freelance rates? Not on your life. Gibbons’ voice is the center of the music; she elevates the recordings from tracks to songs, from mere head-nodders to forlorn lullabies.
She follows the contours of her voice along its breathy edge, cutting sharply through the meat of a glissando, falling back on the catch in her throat. Despite her convincing air of sorrow, she’s a knowing, playful singer, capable of shifting emotional registers on a dime, cycling through moods—jazzy and coquettish, grimly resigned, wild with grief—like a housefly tracing squares in empty space. In “Wandering Star,” her tone sounds almost flirtatious, despite the overwhelming vastness of her subject matter: “Wandering stars/For whom it is reserved/The blackness, the darkness, forever.” In the closing “Glory Box,” on the other hand, she is as incendiary as Utley’s overdriven guitar riffs, and when she sings, “This is the beginning/Of forever and ever, oh,” her sigh feels like a hole torn in the fabric of the universe.
And her occasional obliqueness frequently gives way to the album's real emotional payoff: out-and-out dejection. Some lines stand out as clearly as dog-eared diary entries: “Give me a reason to love you/Give me a reason to be a woman”; “Nobody loves me, it’s true/Not like you do”; “How can it feel this wrong?” When her words are hazy, her diction tricky, it might as well be part of a grand and treacherous strategy, like a boxer’s footwork catching you off guard before the knockout punch lands.
Without a public persona to measure Gibbons’ performance against, her presence within the songs was, and remains, that much more formidable. Pop fans typically like to know who is singing to them and why, even if it's an invented character. But that central mystery only makes Dummy that much more compelling. Who is this lovelorn woman marching off to war on “Roads,” her broken pleas part sigh, part icicle? Who will she become on the far side of forever and ever—the promised land of “Glory Box,” an uncharted territory that she makes sound both liberating and terrifying? Dummy arrived at a moment when young people were craving soundtracks for the comedown—but what happens when you follow Portishead all the way down, as far as they want to take us? These questions keep you coming back, trying to puzzle out its intimidating balance between bleakness and blankness.
It’s possible to hear in Dummy a collection of gratifyingly sad-but-sexy gestures, and plenty of Portishead’s followers—Lamb, Morcheeba, Olive, Alpha, Mono, Hooverphonic, Sneaker Pimps, and dozens of other acts forever lost to the cut-out bin of history—did just that. Whole retail empires flourished and collapsed while Portishead and their ilk were piped through the in-store speakers. Is Dummy stylish? Of course it is; you don’t evoke ’60s spy flicks without some deep-seated feelings about aesthetics, panache, the proper cut of a suit. But style, stylishness, is only the beginning. None of Portishead’s imitators understood that it’s not the blue notes or the mood lighting that make it tick—it’s the pockets of emptiness inside. Like Barrow once said, it’s the air”.
On 22nd August, Dummy turns thirty. A staggering and iconic debut album from the trio of Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and Adrian Utley, Portishead would go on to record two more albums – 1997’s Portishead and 2008’s Third. I wonder whether they will ever release a fourth. In any case, Dummy was a huge statement of a debut. It turns thirty very soon, so I was keen to explore it. If you have not heard Dummy for a while then take some time out. It is an album that will…
TAKE your breath away.