Articles

Ego Trip Vol 3, No 3, 1998

SOURCE: EGO TRIP, vol.3, no.3, 1998
BY: Andrea M. Duncan

Portishead just wants you to have a nice day

Please could you stay awhile to help me shre my grief,
It's such a lovely day to have to always feel this way..

The music of Portishead is akin to one of those rainy days you get in late autumn. Grey clouds creep overhead, while a brisk wind litters orange leaves on the ground and everything and everyone seems a little sad. Yet there's a comfort, even romance in the darkness of the sky, the swirl of the wind and the stillness of the streets. Tortured artists can stay in, chain-smoke and lament about their miserable existence while lovers can stay in bed a little longer and coffee drinkers can take special delight in watching the steam curl up from their lattes. Sometimes it's good to know that the sun doesn't always shine.

This day will be the damnedest day...

Bristol, the town where Portishead were born and still lives, is a city in Southwest England. It's not far from Wales, but it is far from the oh-so-hip London music culture, and even farther from the town of Manchester--the most recent epicenter of the British pop invasion. The four members of Portishead--Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow, Adrian Utley and Dave McDonald--like Bristol. They shy away from the media spotlight. Beth, in fact, doesn't even do interviews.

"There ain't no real egos in the band, we ain't really out to be pop stars," states Geoff, the outfit's DJ, producer and driving force. " We work in the studio and go home on weekends." Beth is a lyricist. Adrian plays instruments and Dave engineers the whole thing. Each song is a patient that this very serious doctors perform a delicate surgery on.

The first Portishead song to infiltrate the U.S. consciousness was "Sour Times." It was 1994, and despite the growing cult popularity of fellow Bristolites Tricky and Massive Attack, we'd never heard anything like Portishead before. Beth Gibbons' strangely powerful voice wailed over a dark melody whila a moody, Mission Impossible sampled beat bubbled hip hop underneath. The album, Dummy, went platinum in the U.K., gold in America. The band remained elusive despite their success and holed up in the studio to record more. Now, three years later, they have re-emerged with a self-titled second album. Unlike countless groups whose sophomore efforts pale in comparison to their debut, Portishead is a richer and more personal continuation of Dummy.

This past fall, I met up wuth the men of Portishead when they were in town doing the small amount of press that they do. Upon my arrival, I found them feasting on a lunch of soupand cigarettes and conversing animatedly amongst themselves. Geoff, an impish character with a twinkle in his eye, does most of the talking, revealing his rapper-like penchant for ending every sentence with "y'know what I mean." Adrian seems a bit older and has the air of Musician for Life. And Dave, well, Dave is laid back and cool, and doesn't say much. He listens, smokes and tosses one-liners from time to time.

"We've grown." begins Adrian. "We've moved on slightly from where we were before." "When we finished Dummy," interjects Geoff, "we were almost uncomfortable about sounding like ourselves. The sample thing, especially in Europe had gone mad. There were bootlegs comin' out of the rarest beats and people could just loop them up and there you go. "He takes a drag from his cigarette and suddenly looks very serious. "It was like, we gotta get out of this. But then we thought, this is what we do. We have a distinct sound within all this."

No one has said what the truth should be No one's to blame, it's just hypocrisy...

This "sample thing" that Geoff is referring to is the wave of electronic and sample-based music that has exploded on the music scene in the last few years, vaguely known as electronica. It is an umbrella term that describes everything from the techno sounds of the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy to the drum and bass of Roni Size and the latest effort by Everything But The Girl.

Portishead knows a thing or two about being labeled. They were dubbed "trip hop" by the british media back I 1994--a label they're not too happy about. I mention I had also heard them described as "sad-core," due to their melancholy sound.

"Sad-core?" asks a bemused Geoff, inciting laughter all around. "Hmmm. I'd prefer that to trip hop." says Adrian. "Trip hop is not worth talking about." "For us," sighs Geoff, "it's about songs, lyrics and melody. It is about beats and being inspired by hip hop. But it's other stuff as well." To give it a name is ridiculous. It's Portishead music, just like Radiohead music is Radiohead music. Just go into the [record] shop and look under P."

I wouldn't say what we do is really sad," muses Adrian. "We're naturally inclined towards a slow tempo, and emotion from minor chords tends to be sad, cinematic chords."

"Right." says Geoff. "When we go into the studio, it doesn't feel natural to play up-tempo, happy tunes, y'know what I mean?"

When Portishead go into the studio, they spend hours creating sounds, recording them, sampling them, then sampling them again. To try and separate themselves from other bands, they make a concerned effort to only sample their own music. Even thought they end up "throwing over half" of what they record away, it is a tranquilizing experience for all of them.

"It is the most potent drug." Geoff utters dreamily.

I'm so tired of playing with this bow and arrow Gonna give my heart away Give it to the other girls to play For I've been a temptress too long Give me a reason to love you Give me a reason to be A woman

"It's not like Beth's a constantly depressed person," Geoff tells me. "It's just when she hears the music, she starts writing very personal. Things that are realto her. "Beth's lyrics are remarkably candid and exposed--revolving around heartbreak, alienation, loneliness and revisiting of memories and places that are hard to go back to. Inreasing the intesity is the way her voice wraps itself arond the melodies--at times fragile, other times fiery.

With Portishead, the Bristol collective continues to provide rich, sonic landscapes, haunting melodies and bittersweet lyrics. And as the album stealthily makes its way up the charts, the band who had only wanted to make an records is now begrudgingly faced with making videos and acting like pop stars. I doesn't always work.

"We made a video for "All Mine [the album's first single] but MTV won't play it," laments Geoff. "It doesn't have helicopters or speedoats."

Sometimes it's good to know the sun doesn't always shine.

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Dummy

Portishead (album)

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Ego Trip Vol 3, No 3, 1998