5. Portishead | Third. With their first album in a decade, the Bristol trio exceeded all expectation. For one, they succeeded. The magnificent Third was commercially and critically well received, and it earned every plaudit. More than that, they reinvented themselves. It’s still unmistakably Portishead, but gone is the jazz noir trip-hop that spawned so many inadequate imitators. Instead we hear stripped down acoustic sections, rough industrial edges, eerie layers of electronic beds and Beth Gibbons haunted voice sliding just over the top of it all. As an album, it’s a collection of songs no one else could have pulled off. As a band, they still make sense alongside acts as diverse as Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails or TV On the Radio. Yet it’s not anything anyone expected. I suppose that’s always been the point of Portishead.
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