The Third Nail in Trip-Hop’s Coffin?
April 17th, 2008
Salon.com has an interesting review of Portishead’s uneven, disappointing, and…oh, hell, let’s just call it what it is—shitty—Third album and the “death” of trip-hop. Mind you, I find trip-hop to be alive and better than well in the form of artists such as Little Dragon, Jade, Laki Mera, and even Juno Reactor (yes, their latest album Gods and Monsters is surprisingly downtempo and moody, as you will see in tomorrow’s Friday Fivehead), but I think this excerpt from the review of the album itself prettymuch sums up the album’s main failure point perfectly:
Gibbons’ lyrics used to suggest an assertive, liberated attitude. She closed out “Dummy” demanding a reason to be a woman; on “Elysium,” from “Portishead,” she insists, “You can’t deny how I feel/ And you can’t decide for me!” On “Third,” however, she treats her indecisiveness like a torment on the level of psychosis — a one-dimensional, even stereotypical, view of womanhood as equivocal and weak. “I’m always so unsure!” she laments on the album’s dismal closer, “Threads,” like someone about to throw herself off a bridge because she cannot afford a life coach.
Now, here’s the thing: I like dreary, dismal music. I’m a horror writer by night, and a weekend Goth, for the Other Gods’ sake: dark, dismal, depressing music is part of the soundtrack of my life. But that’s not what I want from Portishead. From Soul Whirling Somewhere, Lachrymosa, Sopor Aeturnus, yes…but not from the band that brought back the “James Bond” sound and slathered it with a new, slinky hip-hop vibe. Alas. How the mighty have fallen.
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