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Artists can have awful timing when it comes to putting out new work.
Regardless of the field, the same conundrum tempts them to blunder.
But that uniqueness, once recognized by an audience, inevitably grows into something both fragile and stifling.
A style birthed out of private necessity becomes a public pose, an object of discourse, a commodity.
From then on, repeating what comes most naturally means consenting to ones own reduction.
The alternative, taking on another aesthetic, carries its own risks.
Few acts recognize the terms of this arrangement as well as Portishead.
Nothing like them had been heard before, and they seemed to know it.
Emotionally speaking,Dummywas an ordeal.
Musically, however, it was soothing even in its moments of menace.
Posh dinner parties and boutiques played Portishead.
Gibbonss lyrics had always been covertly political, but now they were confrontational as well.
The melodies went angular and somber.
The efforts succeeded, but only to a point.
Barrow and Utley got divorces; Gibbons fell ill. Everyone was drinking heavily.
The only honorable choice remaining was to part ways for a time, and they took it.
Somehow, it turned out otherwise.
The path toThirdhad been curiously rewarding.
Alone and together, the band members were committed to making a clean break from their former aesthetic.
The regularity of hip-hop production ceded to music littered, carefully, with disordered intimations.
Digital or analog, the textures were immediately, unnervingly palpable.
Gibbonss lyrics had also radically altered.
The allusiveness and symbolism through which her perspectives had been filtered were now stripped away.
Gibbons no longer elaborated; she compressed.
Her vocabulary huddled in a narrow circle of the most fundamental words, gaining power by losing reach.
The conjunction of the voice in anguish and disjointed sonics generated a bizarre contrast.
The crucial word inThirdislife, and life is rarely in a state of health.
One night, reeling in bed, I listened toThird.
I didnt know what to expect.
Yet for some reason the album came through clear clearer than ever before and ever since.
Or is it convalescence?
No album can cure depression.
Barrows description ofThirds structure highlights how the album has a broader scope belied by its extreme involution.
Its just that the experience isnt a pleasant one.
What sort of world will greetThirdat 15, or at 30?
Will there even be a world to greet it?
It feels like nothing is reliable, but thats not quite true.
