Portishead

With the "if it's not broken, don't fix it" attitude, this sophomore effort continues right where Dummy left off. This time their minimalist, trip-hop vibe focuses even more on the chilling vocals of Beth Gibbons as she embraces the mic with her dark yet sentimental mood. "Only You" is a highlight.

Portishead's mix of '60s soundtrack music, hip-hop beats, dub and detached female vocals
became an instant reference point when their first album, Dummy, came out, in 1994.
Three years later, with the very first notes of Portishead, the group easily re-establishes its
mastery of the genre now known as trip-hop. Instrumentalists Geoff Barrow and Adrian
Utley have refined their sound to an instantly identifiable essence: bleeps trans... More >

When you're this subtle, marginal differentiation is everything. Louder tracks, sparser samples, less insinuating tunes--all these changes are slight, but they impel antistar-to-die-for Beth Gibbons six inches toward stridency, and she's hard enough to take seriously when she's toning it down. The real and theoretical depressives who adore them will experience this as growth. Workaday music lovers will glance off Gibbons's shows of misery and never figure out why. (Grade - B-)