Third

In the '90s they favored a warm, enveloping melancholy, a rich sound that could be co-opted and turned into simple fashion, as it was by band after band in the heyday of the swinging '90s. So many groups grabbed ahold of Portishead's coattails that it's easy to forget that in 1994 there was no other band that sounded quite like Portishead -- not even Massive Attack and Tricky, who shared many surface sounds but not a sensibility -- and that is just as true in 2008, years after trip-hop has turned into history. Their cold, stark uniqueness isn't due to a continuing reliance on the cinematic textures of Dummy, although there are echoes of that here on the slow-crawling album openers "Silence" and "Hunter," songs just familiar enough to act as reminders of how Portishead are special, yet just different enough to serve notice that the trio is engaged with the present, even if they've happily turned into isolated recluses, working at a pace utterly divorced from the clattering nonsense of the digital world. Third is resolutely not an album to be sampled in 30-second bites or to be heard on shuffle; a quick scan through the tracks will not give a sense of what it's all about. 

1 Silence 5:01
2 Hunter 3:59
3 Nylon Smile 3:20
4 The Rip 4:31
5 Plastic 3:31
6 We Carry On 6:28
7 Deep Water 1:33
8 Machine Gun 4:46
9 Small 6:47
10 Magic Doors 3:32
11 Threads 5:48