Ready to allow for the originality of their admixture of trip hop and film scores, I admit I found them silly in 1995: Beth Gibbons’ pinched expressions of misery sounded like automatic self-parody. But they hung around long enough to carve a niche independent of Whale, Garbage, and Tricky, and, if you like, audiences were ready for the subtle refinements of 1997’s eponymous second album after three years of hearing “Sour Times” in every Gap dressing room in the land. Then they disappeared for another decade. Thicker, heavier, suffused with a despair that by then was as existential as Ronald Reagan’s permanent cheer, Third eliminated the possibility of a followup; it was as beautiful and complete as a marble sarcophagus. But Portishead have made a career of defying assumptions about their limits.
Here are a dozen dark stars.
1. Wandering Star
2. Machine Gun
3. Sour Times
4. Roads
5. Silence
6. Cowboys
7. Threads
8. Mourning Air
9. The Rip
10. Glory Box
11. Magic Doors
12. All Mine
Humanizing The Vacuum 