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Recent Articles
Recent Articles by Michael Roberts
Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
(Drag City)
Modern Guilt
(Interscope Records)
One of the Boys
(Capitol)
Last 2 Walk
(Sony)
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National Features >
Houston Press
A flight attendant's smackdown with the wife of mega-preacher Joel Osteen inspires a whole new set of commandments.
By Rich Connelly
City Pages
Today Denver, tomorrow the Twin Cities.
By Matt Snyders and Bradley Campbell
The Pitch
A country musician rescues Waylon Jennings' tour bus from the scrap heap.
By C.J. Janovy
Village Voice
The provocateur who brought you "Piss Christ" pinches off a new concept.
By Lynn Yaeger
Portishead
Third
(Mercury)
Published on June 12, 2008
In 1997, when Portishead's self-titled second album arrived, the group's sound was routinely described as trip-hop. Eleven years later, that term is as dead as Fatty Arbuckle, but Portishead is alive again and more captivatingly obtuse than ever. "I never had the chance/To explain exactly what I meant," lead singer Beth Gibbons murmurs at the conclusion of the lovely "Nylon Smile" — and that's just as well, because she and collaborators Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley thrive on lyrical and musical abstraction. "Silence," the opener, is pleasingly jagged, and although a few of the tunes, such as "The Rip" and "We Carry On," employ somewhat retro tones, the likes of "Plastic," with its chopper-blade sample and clangorous insertions, feel wholly contemporary. The hiatus is over, and just in time.