Articles

You Had to Be There

Despite so-so album, Portishead is electric on stage

Newsday, December 8,1997, pp B02

PORTISHEAD. British trip-hoppers take down-tempo melancholia into the theaters. At the Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 W. 34 Street, Manhattan. Seen Friday.

COMMERCIALLY, Portishead has been struggling with its second, self-titled album, released this summer three years after its acclaimed, gold-selling debut "Dummy." Some critics have assailed the group for not varying its instantly recognizable sound - moody spy-fi soundtrack music invested with the groove of hip-hop, the sultry delivery of the classic torch singer, and a healthy enthusiasm for modern technology.

It's true that many numbers from Portishead's two albums are interchangeable; also that so few song titles bear resemblance to lyrical hooks that even the group's fans have difficulties identifying particular numbers. But none of that mattered at a sold-out Hammerstein Ballroom on Friday night, where Portishead proved that as a live act, it towers above the myriad "trip-hop" acts it has helped to inspire.

Much of this was due to meticulous presentation, as when the group's touring DJ, Andy Smith, segued from a warmup set into a specific overture, scratching furious hip-hop beats to a film that portrayed the drive into the southwestern English town of Portishead, after which the band is named.

As the street sign "Welcome to Portishead" came up, five male musicians shuffled quietly on stage. Group founder Geoff Barrow chain-smoked nervously behind his own set of turntables; guitarist Adrian Utley thrived on sparse spaghetti western refrains; studio engineer and official band member Dave McDonald contributed from the sound board. Clive Deemer provided a constantly crisp backbeat that successfully straddled jazz and hip-hop. Hired hands rounded out the lineup on bass and keyboards.

To Portishead's fanatical audience, these men were but a supporting cast to an unlikely heroine: vocalist Beth Gibbons, who is in her mid-30s, refuses to give interviews, dresses casually and smokes furiously. She did not speak on stage until the set's conclusion; the few occasions she was spotlighted, it was usually from behind, leaving her as a silhouette. But her voice - like that of a haunted angel - and lyrics of almost total despair resonate deeply with a public seeking credible, human role models.

Gibbons' words hint at struggles universal ("This loneliness just won't leave me alone" being a typically mordant example), but it is her range and delivery that separates her from other angst-ridden femme fatales. When she closed the set by changing the "nobody loves me" refrain of the group's most popular song "Sour Times," from a sad whisper to a violent scream, it felt like nothing so much as an exorcism.

Nine of the first 11 songs Portishead performed were from its new album, of which "Over" and "Elysium" most effectively highlighted the group's core sound - Barrow scratching hip-hop grooves over, under and around Gibbons' emotional pleas, a unique combination of textures matched nowhere else in pop music.

Throughout it all, a variety of hypnotic backdrops helped to take the music out of its club roots and give it instead a merited theatrical context. Succumbing to expectations, Portishead concluded proceedings with four well-known, perfectly executed songs from "Dummy," leaving the audience well satiated, if not positively delirious. As a live act, Portishead is currently without parallel in its field.

Tony Fletcher
Tony Fletcher is a freelance writer

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You Had to Be There