Album of the Week #18: Portishead - Portishead
This is Album of the Week #19 ~ This week's album is Portishead - Portishead Year of Release: 1997 Genre(s): Trip Hop Country: United Kingdom Length: 50 minutes RYM | Listen! Excerpt from Vulture:...
This is Album of the Week #19 ~ This week's album is Portishead - Portishead
Year of Release: 1997
Genre(s): Trip Hop
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 50 minutes
RYM | Listen!
Excerpt from Vulture:
The album makes total sense, but how does it sound? One could argue that Portishead can be more admirable in theory than in practice. Created in direct opposition to the twinned principles of quick profit and easy pleasure, it’s a masterpiece of painful rigor. With the exception of “Undenied,” the album’s exhilarations, though plentiful, are inseparable from its harrowing politics and embattled nature. Utley’s riff on “Cowboys” is fit to saw through steel; Barrow’s beat on “Elysium” counts its measures with an alarming or bomb-adjacent urgency; Gibbons’s voice, shorn of comforting accompaniments, is charged with a kind of grievous purity throughout, reaching heights of agony unheard on Dummy.
Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?
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