Bandsplain - Portishead with Rob Fitzpatrick

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Yasi and writer Rob Fitzpatrick head back to Bristol to tell the story of Portishead. They discuss the band’s unique and highly detail-oriented approach to crafting music, the uneasy relationship with fame that followed their success, and how music can be both super popular and wholly misunderstood. Listen to the Portishead playlist here. Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuest: Rob Fitzpatrick @rob_fitzpatrickProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi guys, it's Yossi. Just wanted to pop on here real quick for the episode to tell you in case you haven't heard yet that Bansplain is doing a live show in Boston. We are joining the Incredible Something in the Way Festival. Chris Ryan and I will be joined by Patrick Flynn of the Godtier band Fiddlehead at the Sinclair in Cambridge on Friday, January 30th at 8 p.m. Tickets are on sale right now. And there's a little bit more, babe. There's a little more because we're also doing a late night movie screening of one of our favorite movies of all time. Repo Man, CR and I will be doing a gorgeous little intro of that film at the Coolidge Corner Theater on Saturday, January 31st. All the information and where to buy tickets, you can find that at the ringer.com slash events.

So please, if you're in the Boston general area, come out and join us. It's going to be really fun. Friday, January 30th for Bandsplane Live at the Sinclair in Cambridge, and Saturday, January 31st for the screening of Repo Man at the Coolidge Corner Theater. And the tickets again are at the ringer.com slash events. Hope to see you there. What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain?

Wait, like, Bansplain? Never heard this. Hello and welcome to Bandsplane. I am your host, Yassi Sallick. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about Portishead. My guest today, you guys, my guest today is a journalist, esteemed podcaster, host of the States of Independence podcast, and my former colleague, Rob Fitzpatrick. Welcome to the program. An actual British person. Thank you for having me. It's a delight to be here. It's lovely to see you. It's lovely to see you as well. Genuine years. You know, I had to do it to them, get a real British person to talk about Portishead. Of course.

I mean, you're not from Bristol. No, but my son went to university in Bristol. Counts. Yeah, it counts. Yeah. Before we like dive in to the history, the rich history of Portishead, do you want to talk to me a little bit about your personal relationship with this band? Yes.

I mean, I've got a lot of personal relationship with this band in the sense that... Not creepy. No, no, no. No, no. No, not in a creepy way, in the sense that in 1994 I was working in a record shop in Putney and Portishead rather like Oasis landed like a bomb everywhere. But I also remember, and I can't really remember this about anybody else, but I literally remember the first person who ever spoke to me about Portishead,

Like before any of the records had come in and they're like, have you heard this? Who was it? That was Colleen Maloney, who is now the head of press at Domino Records. And she was working at 4-D at the time. And we were really good mates. And she said to me, have you heard Pointe's Head?

Like it was... Right, like a hushed tones. Yeah, because it wasn't out yet. Yeah. But there was a growing thing. And then when they landed, it was like, wow. And also, then a couple of months later, They were on TV, their first TV when they did, yeah, when they did later.

And that was like, it was a bit like a sort of, it was not exactly Ed Sullivan doing the Beatles, but it was people, we literally stayed in to watch it. And that was, it was unusual to stay in. And it was, I mean, it was less unusual to stay in and watch TV than it is now. But people did literally stay in to watch it because it was like, wow, Porte's He said it going to be on telly. Yeah. It was a thing. So I remember that as well.

So I've got deep roots. Okay, amazing. Yeah, and you can really talk to me about, like, what it felt like, particularly here in the UK, when that phenomenon sort of swept. Yep. All right, well, let's take it from the top. Let's go from the top. Jeffrey Palbero, born 9th of December, 1971.

My guys, isn't satirious? That kind of makes sense. Yeah, really marches to the beat of their own drum. Of course. He was born in Walton and Gordano and moved with his mother after the divorce of his parents to the town of Portishead when he was like 10 or 11. The story is that Jeff and his family moved there because his grandfather was the village handyman. So he got them sort of cheap housing. You guys, we used to have village handymen.

We used to be a real country. We used to be a proper society. And now you have to use fiver. and exploit the, like, the labor of some person who's just trying to scrape together 17 jobs to make a living. Yeah, sadly. The gig economy has spread worldwide. Yeah, exactly. Another one of America's gorgeous inventions.

The race to the bottom has reached us to. Well, yeah, so then thank you, Grandpa, because we've, thank you, Grandpa, for many reasons, lineage DNA, but also for bringing us to the table. town of Portishead, which obviously will become extremely important in terms of band names and such. His father was a lorry driver. I used the parlance of your people. And his mother was a supermarket cashier. He started learning drums at the age of eight years old. It's a seaside suburb, Portishead, about 10 miles from Bristol. Jeff Barrow said to spin in 1995, I really don't like the place. It's a place you go to die. Yeah. There's actually a really great French documentary Have you seen this about Portishead?

I think I've seen bits of it. Yeah, it came out in like 98, I want to say. Documentary is kind of an overstatement, but it's like an hour-long piece about them. There's this like incredible part near the end where it's Jeff, and I think is his name Andy Smith, who was their DJ. Yeah, yeah.

And for like his high school mate, and they're like sitting in like, I don't know, it's a bus stop or something, in Portishead and just talking about what it was like to your own person. And he's like, yeah, we had one cafe. It was closed in the winter. We would just get ciders.

sit here. And there's all these, like, I think ducks going around. He's like, we've known those ducks their whole lives. The other guy goes, I knew your dad. So there was nothing to fucking do. That's a lot of places in England. Yeah. Maybe not now, right? No, I think maybe even more so now. Well, they have TikTok now. There's plenty of to do. Well, yeah, it was sitting at the bus stop and look at TikTok. And look at TikTok and drink cider, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so he said, Portis had probably only influenced me in that I was really pissed off living down there feeling bleak. It was the usual teenage thing.

The only shows there would be some local young farmers trad band from Cleveland. I wasn't the type of teens. And not even the good Cleveland. Well, I don't know. It's bold statement. It's a good Cleveland. I wasn't the type of teenager who'd got and get smashed,

unfortunately. I was more the type of would stay in and worry about world affairs. This is a theme, isn't it? It's going to develop over time. One thing I was quite impressed by, which I should just say it now, because it's a very funny story. I've been in London, or I've been in the UK

for a couple weeks now. My family and I came for the holidays. I somehow tricked them into doing that. And we went to the Cotswolds for Christmas because I was like living my best, the holiday life. Yeah. Except I don't know,

I can't know the Cotswolds. And I booked, you know, via home from the internet with no information. And so we absolutely booked into this, like, lovely, but like an inn full of 90-year-old people. Welcome to the Cotswolds. I mean, that's literally what it is.

Yeah. But, like, not posh. Pretty like just standard, like, 95-year-olds from an hour away. There was like eight wheelchairs. Coming in for a special lunch. It was wonderful. But my dad, God bless him, by like the third day, which was boxing day, was so bored out of his mind. And we don't have a car or anything.

So he looked at a map and he was like, we're going to Bristol today. Right. And I was like, because it was the closest city. And I was like, okay. And so I posted on my Instagram story, I was like, do I want him in Bristol? Because I was just trying to get a lay up the land. What do I do with my family? And my mate, Stuart, or Maguire,

message and was like, what do you need? And I was like, I need to take my family places. And he goes, okay. And then he puts me on a three-way DM with Jeff Barrow. Because Jeff Barrow is meant to be, I suppose, my tour guide to Bristol. I mean, who better? I wanted to die. I was like, I'm sorry, is this Jeff Bergen-Portes-Had that you've asked,

what I should do with my family. I know. Just what a coincidence. This man also lives in Bristol. But anyways, it did, because I'm cheeky and impudent, it did lead to me. And it was just coincidental. I just happened to be researching this episode. So I was like, thanks for the tourist tips.

It's boxing day, so everything's closed. BTW. Can I ask you a few questions? And he was so generous and kind. And so for the past week, I've just been bothering. this man on WhatsApp with questions about things he did 30 years ago and he has been answering me so

excellent all right good I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say I'll have some I didn't you know I wasn't pushing it but I did just so I was trying to get some clarifications here and there a little background yeah I mean there's plenty out there obviously so his first introduction to music and now I hate that I know this because I'm haunted

by it was a song called the Laughing Policeman do you know this song yeah what in the fuck is this shit babe That's what nightmares are made out of. Yeah. I mean, there's a great tradition of British entertainers from the 70s where something ends up being so awful about them, some worse than others. Sure.

A lot of pedophilia. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of pedophilia. Not always, but, you know, more than perhaps more than might be considered. In the general population. More than whatever the percentage is. More than the acceptable. Yeah, more than the acceptable.

Anyway, let's leave that thought there. But, I mean, actually, this really relates to Portishead as well. The Lacking policeman. Well, just the sense that this is, that's a very specifically English thing. I mean, you know, people, there occurs in other cultures. Other cultures have very specific things to that. It's about that kind of thing where it's like TV, but it's also like music hall. It's also like holiday.

camps. It's like comedy and it's like, but stick it out as a single. Yeah. And it's like, oh yeah. And it'll, you know, that sort of mainstream, the idea of a sort of grown up mainstream entertainment. Right. Which sort of, you could argue, doesn't really exist anymore. No, because there's no, there's no avenue for it really anymore, right? Like, no. Yeah. But it also is too narrow. Yeah. I don't know what impact that I had besides like, it was like, wow, music. Mm. Hmm. Music, but in a odd way. Yeah. But this was more relevant to my interest. This is from his pitchfork, 5, 10, 15, 20.

Love it. He said at 10, he got super into the Greece soundtrack. Yeah. I know that's fucking right. Yeah, me too, actually. I mean, me and Jeff, he's like a year older than me. Okay. A year younger than me.

So you're in the same sort of demographic generation. The first record I literally ever bought was you're the one that I want. So I get that. Greece was everywhere. Incredibly formative for me too as a young child. Like watching the film, listening to the soundtrack. I mean, it must have been. much later after it came out

because I'm younger than you guys but here's what he said the Greece soundtrack was massive I don't know how big it was in America it was big bit but it was unbelievable here when I got into hip hop I realized that Greece the title track had a break in it

a break beat so when I was a DJ I got two copies of it and started cutting it up it was just mental to be cutting up two copies of the track you know so well when you were eight or something I think De Laosol sampled it on a roller skating jam named Saturdays and he said the first time I heard the song

would have been at the village disco. Yeah. Disco hooked on really late in England. I would have been with my family. When you live in a really small community, you have a harvest festival or something like that. There was a guy who lived in the village called Uncle Brian. He was a DJ.

And he used to do parties and weddings and engagement parties. He had decks and stuff. He used to do puppet shows and film shows. Listen, Uncle Brian, we don't know. We don't want to besmirch the name of Uncle Brian. But it's not looking good. Well, it's not so much that it's not looking good as he's displaying all the traits of people who do bad things, which is not to say he ever did. I was fine until I got to puppet shows and then I was like, the hair on the back of my end up saying.

Anyways, Uncle Brian introduced Jeff Barrow to the Greece soundtrack. Right. I wondered where that sentence was going. But yeah, okay. Good. And then after Greece, as a young teen, Jeff Barrow gets super into hip-hop as many young teenagers. Yeah. I'm not going to do it here because I did it on the math. massive attack episode, but I did do a brief history of hip hop, me on the Wikipedia page for hip hop. It is interesting and you should go listen to it, but this would have been like the early

80s. I would suggest that maybe it was more like the mid-eighth, because if he was born in 71, in the early 80s, he's only 11 or 12. And also in the early 80s, I mean, there was the sort of electro. That's what he said. So he got put on to electro via like a friend from school, these like compilations. Yeah. That's exactly what he said to me when I asked him. So, yeah, I think he was a little bit, he was a little precocious, I guess, a little ahead of it.

And he was playing drums and rock bands, I guess. He said when hip hop first hit suburban England, it kind of took over and was massively exciting. It was a real thing you could get into. It's difficult to describe. But to a younger generation of 16-year-old, it was that you wouldn't go out and have a fight, you'd go out and dance against each other.

Jeff are also a break dancer? Yes. Yeah. Were you a break dancer? No. Okay. Is it just because you don't have good rhythm? I just, I'm at my knees, whenever that.

Even at 16. Even at 16, you know, even at 16. You know, if he's saying 15, 16, so we've now placed ourselves in like the mid-80s, right? And so I think it's also worth thinking that if you look at hip-hop and you go to sort of 86, then it starts to be like, oh, what you really understand as the sort of early sampling era of hip-hop. Yeah, because when we're talking early, it's like Africa-Mumbada, the very earliest track. that Sugar Hill Gang and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so sampling is sort of making its way through the ears of young Jeffrey Barrow. But also, he's playing drums in soft rock hair metal bands at this time. I mean, who isn't? I was very much into hair metal. Were you? Yeah, I was. While he's break dancing,

he said he got really into the MC Shan song Marley Mall, Marley Marl Scratch. Right. He said he first heard it when some kids stuck in on the blaster. I got out of blaster. Love that. Yeah. Loverway just drops in Blaster.

The Blaster. Yeah. There was an 85. In Bristol, there was the first graffiti exhibition in the UK, obviously, with 3D from Massive Attack at its center. And Jeff Barrow was there. It was 14. Right. The stars are lying.

I know. Yeah. Then he, as you do, you're getting into how he said it's like 86. He gets some decks, starts messing around tape loops. Yeah. Yeah. And he had Andy, his mate. Andy Smith, who was collecting records and doing DJing.

At 18, he moved to Bristol. He said in interviews, which I thought was very funny, that he was colorblind and dyslexic. Yeah. So he tried to do the other thing he was interested in. It was like graphic design, and he was like, surely can't do this. And then...

You can't see colors and I can't read words. And in that French documentary, they, like, because he didn't pass his exam... Or he didn't pass any... Again, one thing I'm never going to understand is the school system of the UK in the 80s. In the 80s you had your O levels, then you had your A levels. Well, what he said in the French talk is he didn't pass any of them.

I don't know if that's true. Could be a little bit of myth-making. They pointed him at the factory that's down the street from the school and said you could work there. It's like an electric factor or something. He was like, I don't really want to go from the school to like a block down to work at the electric factory the rest of my life. Could be cool, though.

Could it? Well, could it? Well, no. Who know? He could have been the next Uncle Brian. Uncle Jeff. That's a different sliding doors moment that could have happened. But instead, what he did was called up every studio that's number he could find in Bristol to ask if he could please work there.

And the one that he got a hold of was actually not yet open. He had left a message on Andy Allen's phone. And the guy, that studio had closed, but he was building a new studio called the Coach House. Yeah. And he was like, you can build it with me. And if you do an okay job, I'll give you a job. And it was another one of those, like, programs that you guys have for, like, youth training, employment or whatever. I don't remember the name of it.

YTS, maybe. Yeah, exactly, YTS. So he gets a job building the Coach House studio. Right. Legendary. Good gig. Pretty good gig. Put up a bit of drywall.

Put up a bit of drywall. Yeah. I think he's made a bunch of tea. Yeah, a lot of tea. Tea comes into this a lot, doesn't it? Yeah. I was really good at making tea. Yeah.

That's all he ate. But he got to me, in his words, after it was built, it was the first time I had met local legends, hip-hop crew 3pm, and Smith and Mighty. Yeah. Smith & Mighty, amazing. Yeah, sort of like, in a sense, like the godfathers of that scene, like with the wild bunch, but they didn't put out music until a bit later due to like a few kind of boring bureaucratic reasons. So their actual output was a bit later, but without, I think,

their help in their studio and their like production, we wouldn't really be talking much about these scenes. I don't know. There's a very small discography, really, from the time. But the ones that they did put out, I remember them coming out, and they were like just monstrous, like, records. They didn't sound like anybody else.

They produced a track for the guy from the pop group, Mark Stewart. Stewart. And that was kind of an early... I'm going to use a bad word here, you guys. I'm sorry, I just want you to know. You're not going to use that word. Tripop. Right.

Right. Tripop. I think it's very fine to hate a fake genre title that people voiced upon you. Okay, so he's working as a tape op and T-boy, and now it's 89, and Bristol music scenes kind of poppin. The Wild Bunch was splintered off at this point, Nellie Hooper. and DJ Milo had moved to London. They were signed to a major label. Bunnelli was working with soul to soul.

Soul to soul. They had put out two singles, the Wild Bunch, tearing down the avenue with the look of love as the B-side, which was, again, another early. Trip-off. You hear, though, it has a bit of the DNA of what we're talking about that's coming forward, which is, like, the sampling, the female vocalist,

like, this one was a cover of the Bert Baccar Rock song. that Dusty Springfield did from Christina Royal, but it was Sharra Nelson who ends up being the vocalist on the first Massive Attack album. Then Stranger Than Love came out. That's the one I was thinking of. The Smith and Mighty Mark Stewart thing.

Dave McDonald, who we're going to talk about soon, early, I'll say member of Portishead. Absolutely. Yeah. Was roommates with Rob Smith of Smith and Mighty. So it's a... As Adrian Utley said later, also a member of Poroshead,

he's like, we weren't, like, the way they made it sound like we hung out and had tea with each other. Every day was not the vibe. And I was like, no, but they did obviously know each other. Yeah, yeah. Bristol had a very rich music scene. Again, I talked about the Massive Attack episode, but we go back to the 70s. You have the Cortinas, which was like a punk band that kind of loving the clash. The pop group, Rip Rig and Panic.

Also came out of the pop group. Had a teenage Nenna Cherry as a singer for a while, which we'll get into. And then Maximum Joy, which was the post-punk band that Nellie Hooper was in. And then obviously, Massive Attack. I'll do a TLDR if you didn't listen to the Massive Attack episode. But again, I think you should listen to the Massive Attack episode. I know I'm biased, but it's good. So Nenn and Cherry and her husband, Cameron McVeigh, were like a great reason, right?

That Massive Attack sort of even started making music because post-Wild bunch, they really like encouraged 3D, Daddy G and Mushroom to like get on it, like gave them studio time, you know, let them use their house, like all this Yeah, very much in a kind of funding a way to actually do it and to sort of fund it and also to facilitate it. Yeah. It's sort of worth remembering, though, that at the time, like that Nain the Cherry album, that first Nade Cherry album came out. Rawlake sushi. Yeah, which 3D on mushroom worked on. Yeah.

And was absolutely massive. But things moved so fast because I remember when that Rural Like Sushi album came out. And then I also remember when, obviously, when Massifax's album came out, which wasn't that, maybe it's a year later. Yeah, I was 91, I think. But it felt like different worlds. They didn't feel connected at the time. At the time, it wasn't like, oh, and do you remember them from that?

Because things just went, sure, like that. Totally. Yeah. I can see that. And also, there's something about, like, it just feels like Nenna Cherry, even in my memory of it, lived in, it's almost like an 80s album, even though it wasn't, you know? Yeah, yeah, totally. Just the, like, look.

and the style and like, you know. Yeah, that very glam kind of. Yeah, it was such early 90s, you know. Yeah, it was the 90s before the 90s sort of existed. Exactly. But they had that big the face scene and the Buffalo scene and the whole thing. So they were very cool and connected. After Massive Attack was done making some demos and songs in their house,

Nana Cherry and Cameron McVeigh's house, they moved them to the coach house studio with this guy called Johnny Dollar. who Cameron McVeigh had gotten to help them produce, and that's where it's very kind of slowly over time they made Blue Lines, Seminole album. And all the while, who's there in the background? It's not G.B. is it? Making tea and doing whatever tape ops do.

Thank you, Jeffrey. He said, I was making the tea and getting the sandwiches. I started getting on with G, Daddy G. They were all really friendly, and Johnny Dollar was a really nice bloke, but I was a terrible tape op. I couldn't clean the heads of the tape machine. I couldn't set anything up or plug anything in. The only thing I was really good at was constantly making tea.

Right. That's interesting. He says they're very friendly. Side note, I interviewed. Why? Because are they not friendly? Were they meeting to you? No, but I was going to say, I interviewed Robert Del Nageen about 10 years ago.

And it was just on the phone. And I thought, oh, he's going to be a bit. Because it was about, I can't even remember what it was about. I thought, oh, he might be a bit different. He was literally the nicest man ever. Just lovely. Yeah. Just lovely.

Just to do a 15-minute phoneer. was like a lovely, lovely guy. So it's like, I'm sure he was even more lovely. People got a bad rap and it's like actually... But you just sort of think, after that amount of time, someone's going to be like, I can't be bothered with this. And he was like, oh, hey, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he was like, I don't want to talk about 40 years ago.

Did Jeff Barras suck at being in tape-op? Sure. But he was learning a lot. And that's what's important. This was university. University of making music. University of breaks. Of breaks.

Yeah. He told the BBC in 2010, I remember using this kind of Cassio keyboard, which actually had a sampler and a little neave, sorry, you said that, Neve desk outside. So I used to just spend all my time on that with a pair of headphones, sampling bits and bobs, and more messing around on my own stuff than really working, you know? Whatever he was doing caught the attention of Cameron McVeigh. He was like, what's this kid doing over here? Like, this sounds kind of good. That's interesting. This is where the timeline gets a little hazy and I couldn't totally get it straight, but it doesn't really matter, I guess. But Cameron McVeigh buys Jeff Barrow a sampler and a Kai sampler. A Kai Sample.

Yeah. Maybe like sees some talent there and is like, here, why don't you? Yeah. And at some time around this, I think, I might be wrong, I might be off by like a year and I'm really sorry if I am. I don't know if it ultimately matters that much, but around this time that Jeff and Adrian Utley meet at the coach house. Do you feel like that's about right?

Yeah, yeah. So I think he was also- Because he's coming in to do sessions and stuff. Exactly. Adrian Francis Utley, born April 27, 1975, a tourist like myself, in Northampton. I don't think he was born, it was more, 957. Not 97. Oh my God, I'm sorry, it's 57.

Yeah. Me and Jeff Barrow. But he would be delighted to... Me and Jeff Burrow both dyslexic. Are you familiar with the Adrian Utley Bowhouse connection? No. Okay, let me explain it to you. Please.

Okay. Adrian Utley and David J. Haskins. Yeah. From literally Bauhaus. Famously David J. Born three days apart in Northampton. And they went to art school together. And they were also in...

They're sort of in like a couple of little bands together. Oh, I didn't know that. Just at the sort of like punk bands at the end of the 70s. That's cool. And who was also in that milieu was author and comics legend Alan Moore, of course. Who was very much... The Watchman? Yeah, absolutely. Watchman Alan Moore.

So he's in that whole world. Wow. And actually, Adrian and a guy... I can't remember him to it. Alex Green. Alex Green was like a real mover and shaker in the sort of Northampton music scene. of the end of the 70s and he was very much friends with Alan Moore and he was putting a band together and he wanted because obviously in Northamptons there's another small town right

there's not a lot of people yeah there's only 10 people that are cool right and that's like Alan Moore Alex Green Adrian Utley David Haskins Kevin Haskins Daniel Ash right you know like probably Natasha Atlas is also in and out of there and that's basically that's only seven I can only get to seven it's a pretty good seven people pretty good seven people right and so Alex and Alan are going to form this new band and they want David to join, bring him in and he's like, well, I could do, but I've just joined this new band, Bowerhouse 1919 in like

1978. But yeah, but they have played together. I didn't know that. So, yeah, they were. It's an interesting person, I have to say. Very, very interesting guy. Really, really has done some really cool

stuff in this career. Well, after his dalliance with the members of Bauhaus in Northampton and the guy who wrote The Watchman. He was just like a big jazz guitar player, right? That was his whole thing. So he played with John Patton's touring band and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

He had moved to Bristol in the mid-1980s. And he said, it's true that I played jazz for a long time with all sorts of people. But I stopped because I can never equal my heroes, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. I'll never be as good or as spiritual as they were 30 years ago. That's why I thought, he said that's in the 90s. that's why I thought it more useful to contribute something to the present day music to start something new. And what present day music was there? It was Mushroom showing him low-end theory by Tribe Called Quest.

Right, nice. That was sort of how he was introduced to hip-hop. And he said he liked it, obviously, because all the jazz samples. Yeah. Yeah. Tim Saul, who was a mate of Jeff Barrows and was kind of early in there with him helping make beats and songs and stuff, He remembers Jeff Barrow and Adrian bonding over cups of tea and biscuits and listening to low-end theory. Here's what Adrian Adela said.

He said, at that time, I was sharing a room with the coach house, and I was really interested in the fusion of hip-hop and jazz. But I couldn't really do it, although I had hundreds of beats. That's how Jeff and I got together. I was making loads of trippy beats and playing jazz over them, but I never recorded it. I would just sit there playing it incredibly loudly. Jeff was upstairs, and I was downstairs, and we'd go into each other's rooms and talk, and we'd work on stuff, just arcing about with a tape with a break on it, getting to know each other, smoking millions of fags.

I think, do you know what the key phrase in there is? Arcing about, yeah. Because that's where all the beauty in the world comes from. That's where creativity loves. Yeah, arcing about. Yeah. There's no rhyme or reason to it. There's no point to it.

No. It's arcing about. And then out of that arcing about is where the beauty and the genius. Also, just FYI, scrolling your phone is not arcing about. No, that's the opposite of arcing about. No. There's no room for. Our thing about needs blank and bored spaces.

Yeah, exactly. You need to be bored. Yeah. And that is the death of creativity. So I love that. I love this little romantic origin story, this romance. Beautiful. Adrian and Ellie also said,

I had got a sampler and I was trying to learn how to do all this stuff. I was really interested in it. And it was my complete passion. I played guitar and other things since I was 15. And for a very brief time in my life, I kind of fell out of love with the guitar and was really obsessed with hip-hop. I didn't know about the history of it. I learned that from Jeff and Andy Smith later.

But for me, it was super exciting to hear what Jeff was doing upstairs. I was working with samples. It was like 9192 or something. Era suddenly switch and things become really interesting again when they've been really stale. This new thing was exciting. And I guess Jeff asked, he said two different stories, but it doesn't really matter. They ended up wanting to work together. I mean, why not, right?

Why not? Apparently when Jeff asked Adrian to be involved or vice versa, he came back and was like, I'm really glad you're involved. It's been absolute chaos up into now. It's been like food fights and God knows what. Because I think maybe, okay, then this makes more sense about the time frame. I think actually what happened is that Jeff and a couple of people had been tasked by Cameron McVeigh to work on the next Nana Cherry album. And those were the frat house guys that he's talking about.

And they had gone to London to do that. That would have been home brew, right? That would have been home brew, yeah. And Jeff Barrow said, I remember doing three beats for Nena and getting paid a grand in cash. I was like, I'll give you 50 beats. Yeah.

A grand in cash? I mean, that's like... I know. Yeah, right? They're serious. It was like Richard Newell, he said, who was doing programming, Mark Besson,

who was doing vocals and songwriting and Helen White, it was a singer. So this is interesting. So he's helping Nena Cherry, but he's also, this is the beginnings of working on Portisad, right? It's not called Portisad yet.

Yeah. It's just untitled music project. And in the beginning, what it sounds, like to me, it was like sort of taking more of a massive attack form, where it was like multiple contributors instead of... Guest vocalists. Yeah, exactly.

And he had like, in some article I saw he had like an Australian singer and just like different people. And when I asked him like what happened, you know, he said it just sort of naturally fell away and I'm going to get into meeting Beth Gibbons. But ultimately like it just made, he just said it was just naturally moved towards how much. having one singer. Yeah. I remember reading something where he was going, and this is absolutely

redolent of the time, but working with a bunch of singers and it was all like, I'm going to take you higher. Yeah, yeah, totally. He hated the words. But that's what everyone was doing. Yeah, yeah. He hated the words they were using because they were like really boring.

Just boring bullshit. Yeah, I have that quoted here somewhere if I find it, I'll read it. Blah, blah, blah. The song that ended up on Nana Cherry's Homebrew is called Some Days. I feel like you can hear Porta's Head DNA on there, right? There's like tape crackle, there's minor key,

like chord sequence, like, it is like, you're like, oh, yeah, this is what I do. This is what I do. Like, this is what I'm working on. He also produced Tricky's first recorded solo single. Nothing's Clear,

which was on a charity compilation called The Hard Cell. Yeah. Which is cool. That sampled a soundtrack, which is going to be a recurrent. theme in Portisad, the soundtrack to Betty Blue, the French film. So, pieces are starting to fall in place, right?

Like, Cameron McVeigh has given you a nice sampler. Yeah. You're getting some work that is not fetching tea. Yeah. You're working with Tricky. You're working with Nanocerry. Andy Smith has now, like, collected a great deal of records. Yeah.

And he said he would basically come over to Jeff Barrow's house with his crates of records, and they would go through them together. Yeah. And so now he's starting to be like, oh, I could sample this. I could sample this. Andy Smith actually said a lot of the original demos for dummy came out of those, like them hanging out going through record sessions. And then the magical thing happens.

I mean, it's all magical. But I think it's February of 91 maybe. Again, dates are hard to pin down. Jeff Barrow goes down to sign up for the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. If you listen to this podcast regularly, you will know what that is, but I will entertain you again. Margaret Thatcher's conservative UK government She didn't give us a lot

Except really good protest music Yeah I mean that feels like a episode in itself But yeah But this produced Do you know what? A lot of great art

And as a lot of As it has been said a few times recently Though the small investment in things like that Has been repaid Millions of times And not by everybody because not everybody sure.

But the people who were invested in, some of the people who were invested in have ended up repay, you know, covering any cost in taxes. Oasis came out of this because Alan McGee started creation records through this.

I feel like I remember the Happy Mondays also used this. Yeah, I'm not sure how much tax they ended up paying, but yeah. Tracy Eman used this. Anyways, what it was is basically like

you would say, I'm starting a business. Yeah. I think you have, I, think you had to have a thousand pounds. Do you know who's got a thousand pounds? Jeff Barrow.

Because he just got it from Nana Cherry, from Cameron McVeigh. And then you would get an income, like 40 pounds a week or something. Anyways, I guess you had to take some sort of class, something business class to do this. And Jeff Barrow takes his little business class, and that's where he meets. One, Beth Gibbons, who is also there, I guess, to set up a business as a singer. I'm not really... That part was a bit unclear. Good luck.

Yeah. Beth Gibbons born January 4th, 1965. Yeah. So she's nearly 10 years older. Yeah, she's like six years older than Jeff, eight years younger than Adrian. Yeah, okay. She's a Capricorn.

Yeah. She was raised on a farm. Of course. Farm girl with three sisters. She's done very few interviews very famously, right? Yeah. She has done some. Yeah.

She said in an early interview, we all had an enormous amount of work to do on the farm. Everybody had to roll up their sleeves. It wasn't really the time for moods. Right. Nobody cares what your feelings are. Just muck out of the peaks. Get on with it, exactly.

And then she did do one pretty extensive interview in the hot press one in 95. And also when you read that, you realize that it's like it's so stupid the mythology around her of this like extremely like reticent, mysterious. Oh my God. It's ridiculous. It's like, it's ridiculous. I'm like, clearly like a normal person is just like, I just don't want to do this. Like I'm not interested in talking about myself. I'm sure we will get into this.

the press is unbelievable. And I know, I mean, I know a lot of these people. But the way that they've written about. It's like you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't, though. Because if you participate, then one thing's going to happen. And if you don't, then they're going to paint you as this, like, difficult genius or whatever. So, it's so mysterious. So mysterious.

So she said to hot press in 85. I feel almost guilty sometimes when I think of people like Billy Holiday and Edith Piaff, who are heroes of mine. Because I wasn't a victim of child abuse. I didn't have a dysfunctional family. and apart from one thing, which, sorry, I'm not going to tell you about. The worst teenage trauma I suffered was trying to get my homework done on time. No, the pressures on me were more subtle. Coming as I did from a fairly isolated rural community, the expectation was that I'd meet someone locally, get married, and have kids.

It was all very rustic and cozy, but there weren't that many people at home I got on with, and that caused me to feel rather detached. You know, whatever destiny had in store for me, it wasn't becoming a farmer's wife. Relatable content. Right. And I was like, okay, again, this all sounds very sensitive. and normal. Yeah. It's, I think, particularly

through the lens of 2026, the idea that someone wouldn't want attention is like unfathomable. Yeah, but on the other hand, she's also a singer who emotes incredibly

powerfully and writes incredibly powerful lyrics and fronts a band. So, like, that's quite a lot of attention. Sure. You know, but, yeah, but the idea that you wouldn't want to be interviewed. Right.

But actually, I think it's, you know, done her the world of good to just withdraw from that. Because it's like, you don't, well, nowadays nobody, nobody does properly interviews anymore anyway. No, no. Like, that game's over. But I think you can see from the press that they are like, that they then build this, this image for this kind of personality for her. And it's like. But that also dies out, though. It's actually so smart because it stops having oxygen after a while.

You can only go on about this mysterious person for so long. And it's like you see Elizabeth Frazier kind of had the same thing. And it's like it's cool. You know, like I respect it. I do think there's like a kind of a difference between wanting to do your art, which just happens to include performing, which they didn't even really want to perform live. And writing lyrics or whatever.

It's like and wanting attention, right? Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah. They didn't go on TV. You're not doing it for attention. You know, like as much as the Jewel's Hall, but they kind of kept stopping after that, like turning things down. So, anyways, Beth Gibbons. So her parents were when she was young.

At 22, she moved to Bath to pursue her singing career. And then she moved to Bristol. And she said, I've never been much of a party person, which is probably explained by the fact that I didn't escape from the country until I was 22. Most of the friends I did have locally had gone off to university, but not being much of an academic, I'd remain behind. It was funny because even though I was frustrated and wanted to get out, leaving home was quite scary. It wasn't necessarily the reality I wanted, but it was one I felt reasonably capable of dealing with. Anyway, the bright lights of Bath beckoned, and I answered the call, going on the dole, and generally living the life of a hippie chick from the sticks. It was quite an eye-opener.

For instance, until going out with a certain bloke, I had no idea that big lips, long legs, and small ankles are supposedly what every man dreams of. That revelation would probably have caused my world to cave in if I had been younger, but as it was, I found it rather funny. Yeah. She is really interesting because she goes on kind of to be like, I feel sorry now for kids who are told they can't be happy without looking like Tom Cruise or Cindy Crawford. She's like, there's some interviews where they're like, well, don't you feel like you're so much like PJ Harbin? She's like, I don't really know who that is. Yes.

Like she's just not really tapped in, you know? Like she's not trying to like check for what's happening. No. Yeah. That's the thing that happens to so many people and it's definitely part of their story is this idea that particularly in this era, where it's so driven by press and particularly by press, but, you know, radio as well,

that you'll do this thing and then you'll put out, we'll come to this, we'll come, put out in front of the world, and they go, oh, you sound like this, and you sound like this, which I'm guilty of doing too.

Yeah, of course, we all do it. I mean, I've done it a hundred times, but that's your perception. Totally. And that doesn't, they would go, well, I've never even heard, I don't know what you're talking about.

And she, I think, is a great example of that. And everyone's going, oh, she's like Edith Pia from Billie Holiday. Well, she did say she liked it. Yeah, no, she likes that. But the idea that she is, you know, that it's like, oh, it's like, let's just tick the boxes and it's like that's what she's like. I might have a little recency bias because the Jeff Buckley episode was the last, like, kind of big media episode we did. But I feel a few parallels just like in terms of like one thing that's really striking about Beth Gibbons is that she can sing in multiple different ways and sort of like almost like she's multiple different people, you know, which is also something that Jeff Buckley could do.

And I just like, it made me think of it. because I was like, oh, I just learned about that. I was like, that's very cool. And I think people don't talk about that that much. When they talk about her, like, haunting voice or whatever, I'm like, no, but she had, like, crazy, interesting range of what she would do with that voice. Yeah. Side note, I saw Jeff Buckley a few times.

You did. And I saw him, and I'm just going to come out and admit this right now. I saw him once, I think it was at the garage. And you thought it was, you were like, this is bollocks. It's just got a bit boring. I mean, it just got, honestly, got a bit boring. After about 45 minutes, you're just like, you're like, okay, Jeff, enough already. You know?

that was my review at the time incredible you should not admit that publicly this is my lived experience you're living your truth okay I love that I love that for you

okay so before before walking into the class at the Enterprise allowance game she had played with some pub bands and she had also connected with the bases for Talk Talk Paul Webb

I guess she had met him when he was conducting sessions for the band that was going to become O-ring. Right. And she's actually on the first track of that band's 1984 album, Hers of Instinct. And obviously later, they collaborate on an album that comes out in 2002. In an interview in 1995, she described Webb as her biggest influence. Yeah. Which is interesting.

I can see that. I love Talk Talk. Yeah. Literally the greatest band of all time. They're really up there. Yeah. Yeah. So now we're taking our class.

We're having a bit of a chat. Actually, it was really funny. In a later interview in 2019, Jeff Burrow was trying to describe what this was, and then the day you have to go to the class, and Adrian L was like, personal humiliation day, I think it's called. And he's like, that's right,

personal humiliation day for the government. It was really awkward. We were sat around this big kind of table in this hotel in Clifton, and there was a mobile hairdresser. There was a guy wanting to sell chocolates at the back of a van, like a sheep shearer. Then Beth kind of said she wanted to quit

and just do singing as a career, and she wanted to concentrate on a song, and so on. And it was like, oh, she's a professional singer. And she's looking at us going out there, like, they're a music production company. He keeps seeing us, so I don't know if it was him and Andy Smith. This is amazing. We could have been, well, absolutely terrible, but we were just like, let's work together. Like, they had no idea what either one sounded like. It was just like, oh, we're both here and you're producing music and I'm singing. Like, let's make it happen. Let's form a genre-defining back. Right. Yeah. Jeff Barr also said,

he said that's in 94. She approached me after that meeting to write a backing track for her, to which She added a really strange vocal with screaming. It really shocked us. But when it came to doing the album, we thought of Beth because her voice suited our vibe perfectly. It was obvious that what she did came from personal experience. She wasn't just singing about an imaginary boyfriend. It was honest, which was so important. What makes these artists in bands special is almost always the alchemy of several different people.

And here I find it really interesting because Jeff Barrow is like pretty clinical. in the way he approaches music. Like he said, he's like, I don't listen to lyrics. I don't care about them. I listen, like, with an ear that's like... It's like sonics, isn't it? Yeah, he's just breaking it down all the time. Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't matter what you're saying. It matters how you're saying it. But to make it resonant, you need someone who's being honest and emotionally expressive. Yeah. So otherwise it doesn't really land, right? Yeah, yeah. Or otherwise, it just sounds like crap that other people do.

Right. And it could still be good, but it's not going to be, like, world-moving, yeah, the way, like, the way people connected with Borda's head, you know? Here's the quote that you were saying from Jeff Arrabat. He's like, he's like, all I've gotten from vocalists up until then was stuff like, get higher. Can you feel the heat or move to the beat? And she was singing about Gandhi and stuff like that. It was pretty bizarre. Yeah.

Obsessed with her singing about Gandhi. She was a hippie chick. Yeah. Yeah. He said, when I first heard her voice, I didn't know what to make of it because being into hip-hop or soul music, she had a strange voice compared to that. She had come from folk and Janice Ian and Janice Joplin. I just didn't think it was going to work.

But then there was this realness in what she was singing. She recorded this track called It Could Be Sweet, which is really kind of an early track. It wasn't soul, but then it was. And it wasn't overly jazzy. And it wasn't folk. But she brought this adultness to the track. All of a sudden, it was real. Adultness is interesting, isn't it?

Because if you think, you know, in 1993 or whatever, Jeff is only 21, 22. I know. And she's nearly 30, right? And so she's had lived experience. And she is an adult, you know? She isn't an adult. And he's still a boy, really. Yeah.

I also really like the story about when I guess Beth Givens came over to Jeff Barrow's house to talk about making music together. And I guess it was his parents' house. And he said, and she sang for him. And he said, she was just deafening. I thought my mom was going to have a right go. I was worried about the neighbors. I mean, you can imagine. Yeah.

If she came over, if Beth Gibbons came over and just belted. And also, she's not Beth Gibbon. She's just like Beth from the employment center, right? And she comes over and she gives it lungs, right? You're going to go, fucking hell, all right. Calm down. Your mom's trying to watch, you know, Wogan and just like have a nice evening. She doesn't need that, does she?

Beth giving it big one over there. So funny. Apparently also I thought this was interesting. Annie Smith. knew Beth from before this because he had done gigs with her, he said. Like she would sing and he would cut breaks for her. She was on the circuit. She was on the circuit.

On the Bristol singing. Just live singer, songwriter, folkie, jazzy. So two monumentous things have happened, three, I guess, if you count the gifting, the Cameron McVeigh entering, because that is important. He also funds the poor set demos. Without whom? Without him. He was 40,000 pounds is what I read.

I don't know. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And the Adrian Utley connection. Yeah. And now Beth Gibbons. Now he gets introduced to Dave McDonald, who's an engineer at State of the Art. Again, I don't know.

Timeline-wise, I don't know what was first. It doesn't really matter. But he was an engineer, the owner of State of the Art, Julian Hill, introduced him. And Dave said, he came in and we got on like a house on fire. So we started, me and Jeff, every bit of spare time I had, evenings or whatever. I started to push more and more for time, and we were getting more and more involved in this, making this interesting music. Jeff had an amazing ear for samples. I was very intrigued with it because I was more from the old school of recording instruments, but I was very interested in all this new technology.

He had acquired some of it from Cameron. I think it was like an S-900 sampler and a little digital mixer, real high-end stuff, you know, and a little drum machine. So that's important, too, because from what I gather, Dave McDonald was kind of instrumental in how they recorded. I mean, you'll know more about this because we didn't mention, Rob's also a musician and you've made music. I was making music not a million miles from this at the time.

Exactly. So you know, and as you guys know, I'm stupid and when I say things like chord progression, we're doing theater. I don't know what I'm talking about. Arpigio. But there was a lot of just interesting stuff about how they would constantly

records of back to tape so that it would have that kind of sound or like how they were obsessed with old instruments and they had like some guy that would come around and like gather up their broken instruments go home. It was two brothers I think. Two brothers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the Gibson brothers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. I was like,

of course you did. It was like a fucking sappy brothers movie. It wouldn't really work but it would not work in an interesting way. Which is perfect point. Exactly. So now we're fucking, we're cooking with gas babe. We have four people. We have all the pieces.

Cameron McVeigh said, I just refused to produce for Jeff Barrow. I just kept telling him to fuck off and carry on in the same direction and he was already going by himself. I also told him to stick with the one singer. You said something very interesting earlier, a quote from Jeff, which was when it came to the album,

we thought about Beth. And I thought that's actually really important because that tells you that him and Adrian, Jeff and Adrian, were going, there's going to be an album. Yeah, yeah. And but then they go, oh, and he, so it's not like the three of them go, let's do an album. No, no, no, no.

So him and Adrian go, right, we're going to make an album. Right. Oh, her. And we'll get. That weird one that came around to my mom's house and blew the windows. Blue the windows. Yeah, bring her. We'll also get into like how they, like real early postal service core, if you will, of how they end up making the album with her.

Like, it is very much that, right? Yeah, because it's stuff going back and forward and her. Exactly. Now the name. The name basically came from when Jeff. and whoever were helping with the Denna Cherry album, they kept calling them the lads from Portishead. Oh, those lads from Portishead.

And finally, that just like, I get, I think Cameron McVeigh said it was he suggested it, like that he said, I pointed out that he'd be hard pressed to find a better name than his hometowns. So I don't really know. It's actually shocking that that's the name he was given Jeff Barrow's, like,

lack of fondness for the place. But also perfect. I mean, you can't imagine. What great revenge to take on your hometown by being like, now my band's way more famous than this. Nobody even knows this town exists. And now it's like one of the most famous towns imaginable. Yeah.

But also, yeah, but also the sort of blankness of it. Right. It doesn't tell you anything. It doesn't tell you anything. Which is great. I thought it was like a marine animal. Yeah. So they're fucking sampling.

They're looping. Dave McDonald said Jeff would just sample stuff and he'd be looping and they would just have a loop bubbling all day. Yeah. and just like different ideas going to like you said arcing about that's what you did at the time as well though because although you know it's come up a few times but this idea of like this is sort of technology but technology really was an Akais 950 sampler

and a pair of decks yeah and the technology was like get a loop and just because that was kind of it and you'd have like an Atari they had sampling but they also had Adrian yeah so they had a secret weapon can you play something but the but it was loops and loops is the most important thing, right? Because that's where you're coming from hip-hop and stuff like that. And to find really sweet loops that you could listen to for like three hours. Tasty loops.

Yeah. That was the key to everything. That sounds like what they're doing. Okay, this is so interesting. This is where you're like, man, these people were on some other shit, fucking precocious 22-year-old. Yeah. So Dave McNaught said, once you find loops or find an idea,

there's an idea of creating this loop yourself in modifying it. Yeah. and doing what you need to do. So we would create the loop. Adrian and Jeff would come in, and Jeff would play some drums. Adrian would be doing his guitars and bass on it and stuff, and I'd be recording it.

We'd get this loop, we get loads of them onto that, and then we would get them all pressed up on vinyl. And so you'd end up with like a 12-inch with like 30 samples on it. So they're now making their own samples to get exactly what they want. And they're pressing them on to like,

what are those things called? Acetates. Acetates, yeah, the cheap ones that came from like old reggae, like where it was like dub plates. Dubplates, exactly. And Jeff Barrow said, yeah, What we started to do, and we did on 70% of dummy, was we actually played ourselves and sampled it back. This is an interview with Addicted to Noise.

And they were like, why did you go to all this trouble? And Jeff said, what happened was within hip-hop, if you sample a beat, that record's out there. So what happens is a week after somebody else might use it. And that takes away your fresh sound. So we prefer doing it our way because then you end up with an original sound. And if somebody ends up with the same sound as you, you know they've taken it from you. Yeah. Which is really interesting and we're going to talk about it, where they do have the one sample.

Yeah, they do. Someone thinks, I'll have a bit of that. I'm not going to point fingers. I wasn't there. I don't know what the timelines were. But we will say that within a short period of time, Mr. Isaac Hayes is famously sampled on two songs. He is. Geographically.

Isaac Payday. John. Isaac Pays. Isaac Pays. Also very interesting how obsessed these people were. It wasn't just enough to sample. from yourself, from the vinyl that you made of yourself, the vinyl didn't

sound old enough yet. So Jeff would spend days cutting it back and forth. So it sounded like an old record when they sampled it. Like the level of like attention to detail. Yeah. Really cool, you know? Okay, so by the end of like

maybe 92, they have a shit ton of material. Apparently they went out of money and they have to go set up camp at state of art. Is it state of art? Don't you feel like there should be a though? Anyways, no, no, it doesn't matter. Because of Dave McDonald's connections, they are able to go there.

And that's where they produce, I think, a demo tape, which has versions of it could be sweet, it's a fire, sour times. And according to Dave McDonald, a lot of stuff that's never been released, which I did confirm with Jeff Barrow, and he was like, yeah, it wasn't good enough. And I was like, can I hear it? No, I didn't say that. That was too scary. Box it.

Yeah. Surely never Never gonna happen Never gonna happen Also Jeff Barrow is doing tons of remixes At this time to make money Yeah We need to talk about these real quick

Yeah Iconic Yeah The Depeche Mode in your room remix Right Also walking in my shoes He remix that So good

Paul Weller's Wildwood Right Primal screams Give Out but don't Yeah Get out but don't give up Which is so great It's like a chops

And it's like so menacing And then my personal favorite The Grave Big Bigger remix of nowhere to run. In addition to these, which are all fucking extremely cool, he did a remix of a song by a singer that I've actually never heard of called Gabrielle.

Yeah, Gabrielle. She had an iPatch? She had an I patch. And she was a very... She was an R&B singer. Yeah, and again, this is a bit like we were talking about earlier. Gabrielle is a good example of when you could be an English pop star

and you didn't have to necessarily try and sell records anywhere else because there was enough of an ecosystem in the UK. you could be on Radio 1, you could go on the telly, you'd be in the magazines, and it was like you could be Gabriel. But when there's the flattening of culture and you're up against everybody, it's people like that naturally just sort of fall away. But you guys saw people like that.

Like there's still people who are like so-and-so's, and I'm like, I don't know who the fuck that is. Yeah, to an extent. But if you look at the chart from the time, we will come to this. But if you, you know, it was full of English artists. Right, right. There was an ecosystem to support English artists, and those days are gone. It's a great time, honestly. Globalization does have some downside.

Well, the important thing about Gabriel, besides the iPatch, I didn't know about, is that she was signed to Go Beat. Yes, she was. And so the remix that Jeff Ferro did of going nowhere, in conjunction with the demo tape, has the attention of Ferdy Unger Hamilton. Yes, indeed. A&R at Go Beat, subsidiary of GoDiscs. And that's how they get signed. Only Jeff Barrow and Beth Givens are signed to this deal.

Yes. I didn't ask because I was like, this feels touché, but also it didn't seem like anyone cared. You never heard any, like, I did a lot of research, and no one's ever said a bad thing about it. No one's bitter. Like, no one had a, you know, so I'm sure it was fine. Yeah.

I mean, Jeff Barrow is quite political and seems quite socialist, so I don't, you know, I doubt he was like. Oh, no, I wouldn't, not through me. minute would I suggest that it was his doing that, you know, that Adrian wasn't signed. I think you probably, it's more like... Do you think it's like optics like this guy's too old? I would think that maybe Adrian went, I don't want to be signed. Oh, interesting. There's a lot of this law that I would like to know about and I haven't managed to find out. Should have told me I could have WhatsApp Jeff Barrow. He could have refused to answer. There's a

couple questions that I absolutely respected because he was like, I'm not answering that. And I was like, fair enough, sir. hat tip. You don't have to. And also, this is not a tabloid or a gotcha podcast. I don't really, I'm not really here to like, I don't care about that kind of stuff. But things like that, I think are interesting, you know, not in a sort of like. Not a salacious way.

No, not at all. But just in the kind of, the older I get, the more interested I'm in process. And how do these things, why did you make those decisions? Totally. Yeah. And those are fascinating to me. Especially given how different the landscape was, it just everything was so different in the 90s. Yeah.

But the fact that Jeff and Adrian, not to bang on about this endlessly, but the fact that Jeff and Adrian, it's basically their band, right? Right. If you go back to that quote earlier, when we went in to make the album, we thought about Beth. Beth ends up, well, you've got to sign Beth because she's writing the lyrics and the songs and she's the singer. And the melodies, top line melodies. Those are just as much as the song. It's Jeff and Adrian's band.

Okay. But should, that's, top line melody is a huge part of the writing, you know. Of course. Yeah, of course. But yeah. Yeah, I do. That leads me to think that. perhaps Adrian just went, I don't want to. Maybe. Maybe he wanted to be free to do other things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know?

Like, why hitch my life to this wagon? It's never going to sell a record in their lives. I doubt that's what he was thinking. So now Portishead is signed, as Portishead, to go beat records, the first single that comes out, June of 1994. Yeah. Numb is the first single, that thought was really interesting. Also, just to like quickly zoom out, 1994, June, that's two months after the death of grunge, which you can kind of, you know, symbolically place around the death of Kirkobay in April. There is like a fatigue for that kind of music, I think, very clearly in 1994. I mean, in America, something different happens, right?

We have, like, sort of more poppy alt-rock comes up, like Weezer and Green Day thrive. But I could see maybe here it leaves a vacuum for obviously brick-pop. and this other thing, right? Well, I remember exactly where I was when I read, literally read in the newspaper that Kirk Bain had died. Yeah, I saw it on MTV.

Yeah. But at the same time, Nirvana already felt in the past, right? Right, because it's two and a half years after they've topped the charts. Yeah, but when, even when in utero came out, I can vividly remember it when it came out. And it sort of felt a bit like,

I mean, we'd sort of move, yeah, we'd kind of, things had moved on. In the UK, because like, swayed and stuff? Yeah, but there was so many things. Right. It was swayed and, yes, of course, there was all of that. And there was massive attack. And there was massive attack. And there was, you know, primal scream.

But also, there was so much stuff like kind of the sort of post-rock stuff and jungle and hip-hop was really fine. There was a load, there was tons of, what I think is important to remember at this moment is that at this point in the 90s, new music was the most exciting thing and it was going in tons of different directions at the same time and you could be into hip-hop and post-rock and math rock and dub and jungle and indie and all these things

and they all fed into each other which is where Portishead comes from and now it feels like the weight of old music is almost like you can't get rid of it you know it's like it's everywhere all the time It's saturated, you know, AI. But at the time...

It's not just because of that. I mean, it's because of the death of the monoculture. Yeah, well, yeah. Like, the shadows of the great heights that these other art, these old artists reach have just not been matched. No. There's nothing to take its place. But it's also like, how can they be matched?

They can't. We don't have a monoculture. Because we build a kind of golden glow around them, which means... But we did that with the Beatles, but Nirvana still broke through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have a system to raise them up as high. We don't have MTV the way we used to. We don't have the music magazines the way we used to.

It's just impossible to get that big unless you're a straight-up pop star, unless you're Taylor Swift. Yeah, but then also you can be a massive pop star and literally no one outside of your silo knows what any of those songs are anyway. So there's still no cultural impact. People know that you're famous. Everyone's heard of you. But if you said sing me five songs, it's like, well, I don't know. I mean, I literally wouldn't know. I can sing five, Taylor Swift songs.

But most people can't. Right. I don't know if that's true, but... I don't know. I think most people... Anyway, it doesn't matter. That's a sort of rabbit hole. But I think that it is worth remembering

that how fast music was moving at the time. And definitely in the UK, before the death, plenty of time before the death of Kurt Cobain. Totally. Nirvana were like, yeah, but you're good. But it's like, you know, they're sort of big mainstream rock stars now. And there's much more other... There's much more exciting things happening elsewhere.

way. I guess I'm maybe more setting it up for, because Porta's head breaks in America. So, like, I think, maybe I'm more setting up for how they broke in America. But I hear you. And also, I think it's more interesting to talk about 94, even in the UK landscape, is like, a lot has happened. Yeah, yeah. Blue lines was a huge deal, right? You know, like, and that obviously kind of primed the pump for people checking for this particular

I know it's not exactly the same and I'm so sorry I'm not trying to genreify it but you know it's from the same area and it has definitely similarities in terms of how the music experience and you just said it like massive attack is very explicitly

and obviously rooted in the intersection of reggae hip hop punk you know and Portis had similarly but a little like one step removed it's a little more coalesced, I think? Do you think, do you agree with that? I would say that one of my theories

about this record that's, that I think is important to consider, is that massive attack, Smith and Mighty, soul to soul, even though, you know, they're all different things, but they come out of sound system culture, they're DJs, right? Now, Portishead don't come out of sound system culture. It's a different thing. Yes, they are, you know, they are a part of it, but they have, they're not, they're not, when you listen to dummy, it's not like, oh, these are going to bang. Right. They ain't going to, they're not built to bang.

Yeah. They do bang sonically, but they're not built. Right. These are not like DJs making records for the dance. Because Jeff Burrow was a bedroom DJ by and large, right? Yeah, yeah. And his approach was completely different. He's not Uncle George.

Was that, what was his name? Oh, no, Uncle Brian. Brian. Sorry, yeah. He's not Uncle Brian. Not yet. It's not too late. He's still in Bristol.

He couldn't. He could. It makes a lot of sense to me why porting. Portishead is the one that took off in sort of even a different echelon than the people that they were lumped in with, rightly or wrongly,

tricky and Massive Attack. It's having the one singer. You know, it feels more like a band. It's a consistent through line, right? Whereas, like, I think with Massive Attack, who's incredible on Blue Ends, is incredible protection, the constant changing of vocalists, I think as a music,

fan, your first point of connection is the vocalist. And you want to know what are they singing? What are they thinking about? This is my, they get me, you know, as a fan. That's kind of what it is. You couldn't do that with massive attack per se, right? And Tricky is a whole different story. I mean, Tricky is incredible, but just making less easily.

And we're going to get into this, I don't think Portishead is, it's been made out to be easily digestible music, but it's not. But it is. That's the trick of Portishead, right? It is and it isn't. And to I think Jeff Burroughs' great chagrin and eternal shame. Well, yeah, and this is what it... Where he goes with it.

Yeah. All right. So I thought Numb was an interesting choice as the first single, because it wouldn't have been my choice. Yeah. It's a great song. Yeah. This was first distributed to DJs as a white label. The sleeve is a still.

All of the sleeves from this era are stills. I love this so much. So Portisette is gift. is given 40 grand to make a music video. And Jeff Barrow's like, I thought 40 grand was a lot of money to making a slick three-minute promo video for the same budget you can make a film

and do a soundtrack for it. And we really like the idea of a Riz Ortolani Italian-style soundtrack. Yeah, Riz Ortolani. Backwards Instruments stuff. And so they make a 10-minute long film. Yes, they do. It's so good.

Yeah. I love it. And it's weird, and it's like, Beth Gibbons, there's no idea what's going on. like Beth Gibbons is wearing, she looks like a foreign princess or something coming out of a of some sort of government building

and Jeff Barrow's an assassin but he seems like he shoots the wrong person which I think that's Adrian but then it turns out that she's in the hospital and then it wasn't the wrong it's a whole thing but it's it's wonderful and anyways all of the art for the releases are stills from that

yeah it's really great it's called to kill a dead man to kill a dead man yeah so numb doesn't chart in Europe It gets a small write-up and melody maker and a singles roundup by a guy called Andrew Smith and he said, eerie, slow burning and cinematic, the spiritual love child of Billy Holiday and Jazzy B.

I'm so too. Scary stuff. The rumors about Portishead are obviously true. I don't know what the rumors were. Well, the rumors are, there's this great band. Okay. Those are the rumors. Like how you experienced it.

Yeah, like people are talking about them. Yeah, people, you know, some people have heard them. Yeah. And like, oh, you're going to like this? because it's like they're next, right? It's that kind of thing. Do you think that if massive attacks, blue lines hadn't broken through the way it did,

it would have been the same for Portis had to break through? My grand overarching theory about this is that Bristol and massive attack are sort of irrelevant to this story. Interesting. Okay, I'd love to hear that. Because I think that you could sort of say massive attack in a way proof of concept, but in another way you go, they're totally different. You know, they're absolutely 100% different.

I mean, like, massive attack, like... I kind of mean it, and even though this is not the same comp, because of the music journalist thing and respectfully as I was one, it's so lazy. Yeah. It's so much easier to play something in context. Something came out of Seattle, and, you know, like... So I wonder if that made it...

I think... Yeah, I mean, it certainly makes it... smooth the ground. Yeah. But I think if you take it back a step before that, you go, if you're Pippa Hall, who was running GoDiscs promotions and marketing at the time,

this is almost like a kind of fundamental, you can absolutely see why GoDiscs, Go Beat, did it, but it also creates an incredible amount of, it sort of brings a wave of problems into the band in a way, which is to go, they're from Bristol, and they've worked with massive attack.

And it's like, of course, because you want people to go, oh, Bristol Massif Attack, they're cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll do a 100-page down-page feature on them next week. Great. But then it creates this wave where it's like, they're Bristolians with the TH.

Yeah, they're from this trip-hop scene that like... My other theory is that trip-hop doesn't even exist. No, it's not real. It's not a real thing. It's not a real thing. It's not a real thing. We've litigated this with grunge, where it's like grunge is not real.

Like, Nirvana is. and Pearl Jam are not, do not make the same kind of music. Nobody ever came into a record shop and said to me, where's your grunge records? Yeah. It is interesting because we were, I was talking with a friend about this. Yeah, yeah, we're talking about this. Yeah, yeah, we'd say, where's your house records?

Even hip-hop. Yeah. Nobody ever, ever, they would never say, where's your brip-pop records. They've never said, where's your grunge records? They never, nobody ever said, nobody tri-pop. I wonder if younger people do now, though, because they don't have the language.

Like, I wonder if they are like, I love Brit pop, you know? Oh, totally. Yeah. I think because it's a thing. But Bripop wasn't a thing at the time. No, it was, I mean, this is all sort of manufactured by journalists, respectively. But you could certainly see, like, a record shop now with a trip hop section. Yeah, we can pin this.

I have it down here, the guy who coined the mix, Andy Pemberton, I think it was his name, talking about DJ Shadow. Yeah. He did a great disservice. Well, but. He was doing his best. He was doing his best. I mean, look, the thing about tripop is that it's a beautiful phrase, right? and it makes perfect sense

and you go trippy hip-hop. But actually, if you listen to Massive Attack, there's nothing trippy hip-hop about, I mean, maybe five-man army is made a little bit. I mean, there's rapping. Basically, it's just a hip-hop. It's just hip-hop. It's just got dub techniques in it.

Well, I did, yeah, it has dub techniques. It's the BPM. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The BPM is like, I think I read it in the master type that's, like, exactly in between, like, reggae and hip-hop or something. It's like 90. Yeah, so I think that is the, the interesting.

But then if you listen to dummy, right, because tripop suggests that it's hip-hop with a kind of thing. And it's like, that's not really what dummy is about. Just because it's using similar approaches

in terms of like sampling and break beats, that's really it. But it's not a hip-hop. It's not a hip-hop album in any sense. No, and there's not really break beats. There's not break beats on dummy. Yeah, yeah. They're not looping break.

There's very unsyncopate. The drums are very, they played very straight. Yeah. It feels like they're almost completely throughout the whole album. They deliberately avoid just drop in a little. Yeah. They don't do that at all. It's absolutely straight.

But if you actually look at some of the B-sides from the first singles, things like sort of toy box and stuff like that, then you go, well, that's, if you're going to say, if Tripop's a thing, then it's like this. But that's where they've just done these remixes, which are just like, this is like for DJs, basically. Yeah, yeah. They're just straight up, you know, banging bits. with a vocal pasted on, you know, they sound great. They sound great in a club. It's a bit of a disservice, right? To be like, we talked about it,

it's like, you painstakingly made this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. From scratch. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they just, and it's like, okay. So Numb does get quite a few write-ups, like it gets a single of the week

from Melody Maker after that small one. Yeah. It gets an NME write-up. Yeah. They just already talk about their scene mates. And once again, it's like, I don't, we don't have scene mates. Yeah.

Sour Times is the next single, August 1st. Yeah. Initially, it hit 57 in the UK singles chart, but then later, after Glory Boxes releases a single in 95, they re-released Sour Times, and it peaked at number 13. Also worth of remembering that it actually mattered at the time. Well, in the sense that 57, it's like,

actually, you know what, that's not bad. Right, yeah. That's pretty good because people actually bought records and they actually, people cared about what was in the chart. GoDisc is a major? Yeah, well, GoDisc would be, yeah, it would have been aligned with a major, probably like Polidores? I can't remember, actually. But it was, that was perfectly acceptable, you know. Yeah.

And well, it even charted in the US Billboard Hot 100. Because Sauer Times was on MTV. Yeah, yeah. It was on the radio. Yeah. It was on KRO. But what's interesting, and I'm sure you've read the same Billboard features from 1994 as I have, just in our, you know, when we're relaxing at night.

In our free time, in our down time. In our free time and our downtime. You always go, well, look, these people have got it. They've got the idea more than the UK sort of music press have, which is like, because the other thing that's happening at the same time is, of course, is Oasis, right? And they're going, point of head, yeah, they're great.

No one's talking about tripop. No one's talking about Massive Chat. They're going, here's this band, and they're doing quite well and they're on the radio. And there's this other new band that are called Oasis, so we're also doing quite well and on the radio. And it's like the take is totally, different and much more straightforward and going,

this is a band with some quite good records, this is a band with some quite good records, and they're both sort of doing it. And no one's going, well, of course you know that in 1980- Nobody in America knows where Bristol is. No, I know, exactly, but actually it's a much cleaner way of looking at it and it's sort of ages better. Right.

It's less colourful. It's not much to talk about, but it's... I mean, people do like, they love an idea of a scene and, you know, a cinematic universe that they can link people together. Journalists do. One, and And readers. I've done it.

And readers. And that's why they do it. They do it because readers like it too. Yeah. It explains a lot in a short space of time. Sour SourTimes is another really good one which go, that basically is trip-hop, right? You know, you go, it's worth, you know, I would be the first to go, trip-op doesn't exist. The album's not Trippop.

But then you go, but some of those remixes, that is deliberately, that really is. I mean, they're not going, oh, we must do a trip-hop remits because that wasn't a thing. But if you wanted to nail something to the sort of trip-hop mast, you go, those early, remixes on those singles. That sets the template for what people then thought, oh, that strip up. You're like, this is a fake genre. However, if it was a real one. Yeah, it's a fake genre, but if it was a real one,

those would be the defining texts of that genre. Yeah. One important point about the release of Sour Times as a single as John Peel played it. Yeah. Which is a big deal, right? Jeff Barrow said what I loved about him is he didn't play it again because it became too popular. Yeah, right. And he just wanted to make room for other stuff that people hadn't heard.

Yeah. Things happen very fast. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about Dummy. August 22nd, 1994. So obviously we've talked about a lot of the inspiration. One thing that that guy, Tim Saul, who was early friend and helper, went on to make that band Earthling,

he remembers them listening a lot to an album called Sweet London, like a hotel suite by the peddlers. The Peddlers, yeah, indeed. 1772. It's a classic. I went and listened to it. Did not know as a classic. I've never heard of it.

As he describes it, and you can tell me if you agree, it's a very strange mixture of working man's club cruning over really interesting arrangements by the London Philharmonic. Yeah. So the peddlers were a three-piece band who, you know, they're like a working club band. They do covers and all that. It's like a bass player, people play a drummer.

London Suite, Sweet London, was like their... kind of, you know, like, if you think, like the BG's Odessa, it's like their madness on thing. Well, this is as close as the peddlers got to doing their madness. No one, you know, nobody bought it, but it's now like a £100 record, you know. It is a beautiful record and it's odd. And it's an odd and beautiful thing. And another one of my theories about this album about Portishead is that actually what they are is the greatest ever working man's club band. Lownd.

Yeah. Yeah. The greatest ever lounge band, right? And they were just, you know, play at Butlins. They got a weird over the winter booking at Butlins. And they're just, every night, they're just out there playing these things. And you go and see them by chance. And it's like, oh my, what the fuck?

They're amazing. Okay, let me ask you a question. Why do you think Portishead's dummy was so easily popular? Like, why did it become popular so quickly and so easily? Because it was exactly the right record at exactly the right time. it was very cool. It had all the cool elements. It had hip hop and scratching and this crabble.

Yeah, so you've only got to look at the press, right, which is like everybody literally across the board, right, goes, oh, fuck, this is amazing, right? And because it was. But also at the time, if you were like a nerd like me in a record shop, you also saw that what Jeff and Beth and Adrian were doing, it was really cool. That was a cool record.

And they had taken all these elements of things that you liked, like from, you know, hip-hop and from jazz and from dub and from not funk. There was no, they're resolutely unfunky, which of course makes them funky as hell, right? But all those cool things, and they put it into these things with these amazing songs. And that is basically all about the songs, right? But also this really unusual, incredible voice. This was like a real thing. No, because you couldn't put this together.

Like, it's really odd. But as soon as you hear it, you go, and this is the curse, right? Because as soon as they release it, it was massive. Everyone was talking about it, everyone. People were talking about it beforehand. It comes out, yeah, they're not hit singles, but no one expected them to be hit singles. That's not how it works.

But then the album comes out, and it's like everyone loves it and you could, it was also as you talk about like the monoculture it was that era where everywhere you went you heard it right in the same way that you would hear like Bjork's first album or

you know leftism or sort of things like that they were just albums that just everybody bought and everybody bought dummy I think that's so interesting is like it's it has such a magic trick of like how the greatest things are really accessible because they seem simple.

But you could never recreate it. No. The levels of trap doors and sonic tricks and little games being played. And actually what I think is really interesting like you just pointed out, it was played everywhere to this day, right?

You'll hear it in a hotel lobby or a coffee shop, which is, again, much to Jeff Burroughs' chagrin that it's coffee shop music. it's shocking that it kind of is because if you actually listen closely to it, it's quite challenging. Yeah, totally. It's a little aggressive, right?

It's a little prickly. It's thorny. But if you don't, if you're kind of smooth-brained about it and you're just like, oh, I'm getting a lot to it's $18, you're going to be like vibes. You know, like it can easily, if you don't pay attention, it could just be vibe music. That's the blessing and the curse of the record.

Blessing of the curse. If you want to engage with it, if you want to put your headphones on and engage with it, you will hear a different record. Yeah, it's ultimately a bit transgressive. Yeah, totally. But also, if you just want to stick it on, it won't upset your mum.

No. You know, you can tap a toe to it. It's fine. It's great. Or as everyone likes to say, it's shagging music, which I've seen nothing more make Jeff Berra want to die. And they ask him,

they're like, would you? And he's like, in what universe? Yeah. Would I put my own album on? And then I know this woman and I have to think about her laughing at me while I'm having sex.

Yeah, you see that a lot. People talk, and you go, I don't know, that seems a bit weird to me. It did soundtrack one of the greatest, like, sexiest scenes of TV of my lifetime, which is from the L word. Right, I don't. They use roads in it. It's actually very interesting because they don't license the music very often. They're quite tight about it, which is great. Not tight, cheap, but like tight, like a held back.

They want to protect it. Yeah, which is great. They are not driven by money. This could have been 40 Apple commercials, babe. Oh my God. I would do an episode just on the stories behind all the things they've turned down. I know. Which would be absolutely legit.

If you want to come on and do an episode just about things you've said no to. When I used to do 24-question party people, that was one of the questions. It was like, what was the biggest amount of money over turned down? Yeah. I mean, just imagine this stuff that they've said no to over the years. I think real estate in Bristol was pretty affordable at the time and everyone's... But they're not driven by money. Yeah, they're not driven by money.

As most of the best... They're not. Yeah. One quick thought, actually, about it was that the other thing that's happening at the time, right? And I'm not suggesting for a moment that Jeff Barrow or Adrian Utley are listening to this. But 94 is also, there's like slowcore is happening, right? So the band that cannot be named Red House Painters, who were my absolute favorite band in the world at the time. Because you're not allowed to talk about them anymore.

Or they cancel? Yeah, Mark very much. Oh, yes. No, but I just talked about him on our recent podcast. Nobody's ever canceled. No, okay. But anyway, I love them dearly. His Christmas album, babe?

One of the best. I mean, one of the greatest bands of all time. Top five, greatest bands of all time. American music? I write, I love Red House Mainers. Yeah, I love Red House Pets. What? What you did in your...

There's your socials clip. What you did in your personal life? And I'm a real art from the artist person, especially when that shit came out 40 years ago. It's like, I'm not buying a ticket to the... Who cares? Yeah, like, who cares? Because if we're going to start applying those rules,

I will happily. They're all, basically everyone's gone. Yeah, unfortunately, and I know it all. So if you want to tell me your favorite man, I'll tell you why they're fucked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nine times out of ten. You know, but if you look at, but it is, I think it's interesting that there is this thing where, you know, you've got Lowe and Spain and Red House painters and Galaxy Fifi and stuff like that. They're doing this thing.

Port its head of doing this thing, I'm sure they've never heard of each other. But there is this reaction to music that has been getting louder and far. and harder. Yeah. And it's like, well, actually, let's go.

And because also the other thing that's happening is this, this kind of, this embrace of sort of lounge core and, you know, like Martin,

people getting into like Martin Denny and stuff like that. And it's like, so there's this thing. And this is why I think Dami lands at just the right time. Because people are open

to this thing where it's a bit like, oh, you know, there is a retro element to it. There is a bit like, oh, it's a bit like, you know, early 70s kind of thing, which is hip. Yeah.

There's a hipness. That's another thing. You know, you make a great point because I think people who didn't live through the 90s, especially if you weren't like a teen like I was, you forget how much it was referencing the 70s all the time. But you only need to watch like a Quentin Tarantino film. But it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've talked about it on here and I will try to find a photo. But my eighth grade class picture cursed because I absolutely am wearing a polyester 70s, big collar.

button down with like an insane duotone print like because that was cool back then. Right. What you mean it isn't now. Still is. Should I bust it back out? Yeah. I think you make a great point. That's that is a good point. Okay. You guys, for the dorks, for my

guitar center heads, the microphone that they used, AKG-414. Sweet. According to Dave McDonald, I mean, you'll know more than I do. It had a C-12 capsule. The C-12 capsule. Not just any old C-12 capsule or the C-12 capsule. And when you see those old pictures of someone like Billy Holiday or Frank Sinatra,

they're using an AKG C-12 microphone and it's the same capsule. So you kind of get that old sound. And Dave McDonald said that's something I was deliberately seeking. I've always liked the sound of old vocals. I like the intimacy really quick. Quick sidebar. Yes. Album comes out August 22nd.

Correct. Right. Do you know what pop culture moment happens? day after. Big English pop culture moment, but people still talk about. Oh, was it the blur and oasis? No. No. The KLF burned a million quid. Oh yes. That was the day after. Man, the way we used to be a proper society. Stuff used to happen. Talk about not caring about money. Yeah, I know, right?

A million quid. I went to Jura where they burnt a million quid. A few years later with their ex-girlfriend. And I met the person who drove them to that, to the place where they burnt the million quid. Because at the time, it was still a bit like they didn't really do it. And And this guy was like, yeah, they did. He's like, yeah, I drove him there. They don't make them like that anymore. They don't make them like that. Anyway.

No one's a real one like the chaos. No, but I love that. But stuff used to happen, right? And now look at us. Burning and quick. Okay, so I want to talk about the intimacy of the vocals. Because I do think this is a huge. Another thing we're like, again, if you're going to lobotomy listen to it, you're not,

you're not going to notice or care. Yeah. But the vocals are mixed very high on the track, right? Way out front. And that really does create this, like, incredible. sense of intimacy, to the point that it's kind of uncomfortable at times, which, like, I just gave myself the chills.

That's how you know. I love music. But, like, you can hear her swallowing at different points, you know? And because, again, because of the range of styles of her voice, because of the, I don't want to use the word haunting, because it's so fucking hacked, but, like, because of the unexpected ways that she sings that you're kind of not used to hearing,

it really creates this, like, a bit of discomfort, which is why it's so weird to me that they're like, throw it on the fucking Maru coffee, babe. Yeah, yeah. Let people tap, tap, tap with their email jobs while they listen to dummy. Oh, me too, sweetie. Me too, honey.

Love it. You go, girl. Actually, I'm a big proponent of vocals being high in the mix. I think it always sounds, almost always sounds better. So we hint at this earlier, the way it's made. Beth is at home. The lads are in the studio. Yeah.

She adds her melody in vocals when they send. under the track. So she said, I have to add something to his music, Jeff's music, not distract from it. It has to stay equal. And sometimes that takes a great deal of effort. It's almost maths. You feel like the music needs something, but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, testing, over and over again, choosing another angle. And sometimes that's a frustrating process. I say this to be like, she very much was a member. You know, like, She's not only is she thinking about it really deeply, she is holding back. Yeah, yeah.

She could have taken these songs over. I mean, I trust that she could have given what she was capable of. And I think, like, that reservedness is really interesting. Because it's all on display and nothing's on display. And nothing's on display, yeah. So in an early interview in November of 94, Jeff Barrow said, we don't really know each other. Beth works at home while we're in the studio and we never socialized, but we're not social band anyways.

But that's great as well because some of the great bands, they're barely bands, right? They barely know each other. But you either want them to be like the best friends of all time. They've either got to be the Ramones or they don't talk to it. Well, only the Romans didn't talk to each other. By the end, no one talks to each other.

But, you know, but it is a lovely idea that they're kind of, they're very separate. Oh, yeah. And six years when you're 22 and 29 is a fucking life title. What am I talked to this child about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, Beth didn't just do her vocal part. She would sometimes manipulate the track as well.

So Jeff Barrows said she'll resample it, slow it down or speed it up, and re-loop it, and send it back with a song on it. And he said, you're thinking, where's one? Where does it drop? And it's because she's got it looped in between the first bass drum and the first hi-hat. She was doing some cool fucking shit in there too. Produce a shit. Producer shit. Okay, I want to talk, speaking of them, not being friends, but their relationship.

So here's Jeff on Beth in 1995. Love this. A good laugh. When I first met her, I thought she was, a good laugh. When I first met her, I thought she was pretty strange. She's shy. It took me three years to get to know her. She's very sincere about what she does, immensely talented.

We have a lot of trust in each other. I don't know how to describe her. Five foot two. She always seemed really tall to me, but I think five foot two. There's no bullshit there at all. She won't hold back to be polite, but she's not extreme either. She's very positive. She doesn't have reference points like everyone else, which is brilliant.

This interviewer interjects that in conversation with the photographer, she revealed she doesn't know who Courtney Love or Bert Baccarac are. Incredible stuff. Did you read that interview where Everett True says, oh, apparently she's related to Dionne Warwick. Oh, yeah. And she goes, she doesn't, she never even heard of Burt Bacrack. What are you talking about? But these are the levels of stupidity they were in 90s press.

Evertree did be saying shit all the time. Yeah, he did be saying shit at the time, yeah. But that was a particularly... That's the same interview, actually. I just skipped saying it. Right, okay. Yeah, right. I can see why.

I like the honesty thing. Jeff Barros said in a different interview. I think it was a podcast listening that he was like, she'll just straight up tell someone, they'll be like, I loved your album, and she'll be like, oh, I didn't like yours very much. Yeah, good. Like that. And she was like, I think it's better to help to...

It helps them more if you're honest. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, why not? I mean... It's a bit German of her, but, yeah. I don't know, why not. I try to... Well, you know...

You can't say something nice. Keep it too. Well, Jeff's... Sure. They make sense that they would. Jeff said, we had nothing particularly in common, and we wouldn't really talk. I had mates, and we all seemed really young to her. You know what I mean? And to us, she seemed, I don't know, hippie-ish. We didn't know where she was coming from. And then here's what Beth said about Jeff in 95.

Jeff's a bit of a contradiction. On one hand, he's a rather staid meat and two veg, and I don't like garlic Englishman. That's the incredible description. Yeah, yeah. And on the other, he's the sort of bloke who'll almost go out of his way to break the rules. He was all right personality-wise, but what really made me click with him... She's being honest. She's like, he was fine.

Made me click with him is that I thought he was incredibly talented. We don't socialize much because our taste in friends is different. But we do get on in a brotherly, sisterly way. And although he keeps saying, I don't understand you, Beth, he's got a better idea of what makes me tick than he thinks. Very interesting, isn't it? I love that. This bit is my face. Because it's not like people trying to, there's no myth making.

Right, they're not presenting any sort of... It's literally like they're on a kind of a chat, like they're on a dating show. It's like, what did you like about? It's almost as if they met in the employment class. Yeah, and there's no emotional attachment to each other. This is just what he's really like. And this is what I really think of it. It's great.

And then we make... This is why it's such a shame that there's people don't do real interviews anymore. I know, because you don't get any of this stuff. Sometimes every once in a while you do, everyone's thought it was like a random loose canon. Yeah. Chapel Rhone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

She's so crazy. She's just say something and you're like, fuck yeah, I love it. But there's such a weight of these. Yeah. And they're getting, you know, anyway. Okay. So she talked about their age gap partnership. So we just, she said, when you're younger, you have this romantic ideal that you're

going to grow up and everything's going to be all right. You know, you'll find this wonderful boyfriend or girlfriend, get married, have kids and live happily ever after. Nothing. Absolutely nothing has turned out the way I imagined it would. Amen, sister. Also, but she's literally only like 27 at the time, right? She was like 29. But at that time, that's like an old maid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She said, have you ever been out with someone who's younger than you? She's asking the interviewer. And the guy goes, so classic, babe, Taylor's oldest time. Oh, dear, it's usually me who asks the questions. Yes. She goes, now or in the past? And he goes, now, of course.

And she goes, how much older are you? And he goes, 11 years, but I'm remarkably well preserved. Who's this? Stuart Clark. Okay. And she doesn't even say anything about that. But she's like, right, you'll know then that however, unintentional it might be, there are times when you feed off their youth to curb your own cynicism.

Wow. You've no right to do that, of course. But when I meet people like Jeff and other men his age, their perspective seems nicer. They're of a slightly different generation. So they've had different influences and seem more aware of them. You've got to watch it because remember, they haven't lived the extra 10 years that you have. You can't do their growing up for them. Wow. Yikes. That's my bitch. I love that. I was like, wow. That's a, interesting.

Now you, now, again, I totally respect that she didn't do interviews, but from just the little I have gotten to read, it really contextualizes for me why I love her lyrics so much. I'm like, this is a really intelligent and like, deeply thoughtful person. But also funny as fuck. Super funny.

And very intelligent, very smart, very funny, very talented. I think it's also probably brilliant that she just stopped doing interviews because after a while she's going to be doing interviews about interviews and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But actually, this is like the few interviews she did, one of them particularly was like Jeff was ill. That, I mean, that was the hot press one. He was too sick to come because he had like a... And it was back in the time when the label would have had enough sway over them to go, you're going to have to do it.

This is a big thing, right? But the fact that she did that and then that time ends really early on is brilliant because you get a very pure image of who this person was age 28, 29, right? And that's not going to last forever because people get very used to interviews. They get used to the cycle. They get this. It's interesting you say that because now that I'm a Jeff Barrow expert, which happens with every episode. It's like I read 10 years of interviews with you, you know, from the beginning to the end.

And then speaking to him in real time, I was like, it's incredible. You're exactly the same. I mean, I don't know. I'm sure you're mature. That's not what I mean. But your opinions are the same. Your stance towards what this. the journalists think about this exactly the same.

Like, you're saying this thing I did was shit the same. Which I was really respected. I was like, oh, that's, that's like in tech. You really are that person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was no, like you said, there was no myth making. No one was lying. Yeah, right, yeah.

And this is just a bit on the blackness, darkness, forever, if you will. Jeff said, I can't stand the light stuff. Yeah. I can't stand it. I'm not into it. In a sense, all the hip hop I liked was very, very dark hip hop. Yes. And when I was sampling, I was always looking for.

something that had a strange emotional content to it. So this is Jeff Barrow's, in my opinion, emotional expression, right? This is how he emotionally expresses through music is his taste. Absolutely. Right? Like his discretion, like what he's choosing. And he said, so I'm looking for something with strange emotional content to it, something that sparks some kind of emotion or theme or atmosphere.

That's always my problem when we're working. I always think it's not enough. It's not dark enough. It's not emotionally hooked enough. But if I can get some emotion musically before Beth begins, to write and sing over the tracks, then there's something for her to hook into, a thread she can follow. So I think this is also really interesting because I think a lot is made of like, oh, Beth is so depressed and she's this dark, morose figure bringing her depression to the music.

And it's like, no, this is a collaboration. And also nobody's depressed. You're just, this is what the music is. Nobody wants to hear a song about the best day of your life. No, no. I mean, maybe once in a while, but. No, but there's, in the review of Dummy. Yeah.

Stephen Dalton reviews it in New Musical Express, and there's a sentence in that that sort of haunts me. And he says, this is from August 1994, and he says, both Barrow and Gibbons are products of lonely, loveless childhoods. And you go, get lost, dude. Literally get fucked. How do you know?

You didn't grow up in my house. Yeah, and also nothing they've said suggests that. Nothing they've written suggests that. And okay, this is, this is the summer of 1994. There's not a lot out there. But to go to, and this is like, like such classic music journalist bullshit, right? But to go, they are products of lonely, loveless charges.

Who the fuck told you that? Where do you get that information from? Who's the facture? Well, yeah, there were no facture. Yeah. Imagine reading that about yourself and you're like, did I then? Yeah, I know. Did I?

I don't remember that. Yeah, I just remember having my tea and watching telly and it was all right. And I grew up on a farm. Yeah, maybe I grew up in a town talking to ducks for my teenagers. You could write that. Yeah. And sometimes I was a bit bored. Yeah.

But lonely, loveless childhoods? Like, it's like, get the fuck out of here, dude. Okay, Tolstoy, calm down. You know what you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Take it down a notch. Yeah. Oh, the 90s.

I do like Stephen Dalton as a writer, I will say. Not to slag him off. Not at all, not at all. I mean, he's a nice dude. It is just very funny. Listen, we've all done it. I do it all the time on this show. I write absolute fan fiction.

Yeah. Although I do try to say that I am specular. Every time I say it, I don't know, I wasn't there, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's very dangerous. to purport to know about someone's... I have done it a million times. I'm doing it now.

Well, we are writing fan fiction. We're speculating. We are being fans. This is different. This is all speculation. Yeah. Okay. Now about the lyrics.

Jeff, I don't get involved. Lyrically, I trust her. She is being honest. She's not writing a song just to make money or sound distressed. It was actually a great. That same Addictus in Noise interview. I think it was Jan Yuleski, so it was like, is Beth really that depressed? And he was like, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. It's such a weird thing, isn't it? Like, is she depressed? And then he goes on and he's like, well, neither of them. He's like, we're not really happy people. Yeah, but like what artists are happy. Like, show me a good artist.

Liam Gallagher seems quite happy. He's now. He's been pretty happy then, too. Yeah, but then again, he's not writing the songs, is he? No. Miserable. Yeah, miserable. Beth said, I don't actually think the songs are that desperate.

No. I do have an emptiness, but then everyone has to a lesser or greater degree. True. I tend to dwell on mind more than other people do, which I'm sure manifests itself in my lyrics. Suffering for your art is most definitely overrated, but I do get a certain, I don't know, satisfaction from being able to deal with my paranoia and security. I wake up sometimes and think, no way am I going to be able to get through the day. But you do, and at the end of it, you feel a tiny bit stronger. When I'm that up, I'm too busy enjoying myself to write about it.

I'm naturally pessimistic, but what motivates me isn't so much depression as a sense of helplessness. And that is just that line unlocked a lot of Portishead for me Because I was like, what I'm relating to in the music of Portishead Isn't depression, right? It's not inertia. It's frustration. Right? There's a friction that makes it.

That's the challenge of listening to it. And of course, like, there is like a, you know, maudlin thing going through. But the sadness comes from the frustration of like, I want something different. Yeah. It's a bitter. Or you're not recognized. this thing that's here. And also I think that, you know,

I say this is someone who, like, largely only listens to very sad music, right? Amen, my brother. But, you know, but not so much, it's not like, oh, I must listen to the time. He's like, that's just the music I like. But also, there is nothing more uplifting than melancholia, right?

So when I listen to any Portshead record, you know, dummy was something that I listened to too much. You know, you heard it too much, and it was like, I probably took a good 20 years. I need to go to institution. Yeah, yeah. I don't need to hear that ever again. But then, you know, I've listened to it recently.

It's not my favorite of their three, but it's four. You're a third guy, I can tell. Well, hmm. Oh. But it is a weird thing. And also, I'm sure you noticed in there, when people start talking about this in the press, the thing that gets mentioned a couple of times is like, they're bit goth. But it's weird because I know.

And this is a thing that's really weird. Like, because you were a black turtleneck on television. But this is a weird. weird thing that at the time and goth was used pejoratively right and now of course goth would never be used perjuratively because goth is cool right but in 1994, 1995

it wasn't seen as being cool and she is so clear in what she's saying on how she's and I'm not saying that she's you know this is like 100% autobiographical no song is 100% auto paraphrase but this sort of relates also to that thing about going she doesn't do interviews it's like how much more

do you want this woman to tell you about herself than the way she sings and how she sings and what she says and the way she says it and the voice and the voice is as you say. They want everything. They'll eat you alive, babe. Yeah, but it's like, you don't need to know anything else about her. It would detract from it. It would detract from it 100% because it's not going to be as interesting as that. And it can't be, because why would it be? Otherwise, you'd make an album about what she had for tea. To quote Kevin Lee Harris of my favorite current band, realize, all the best music sounds like longing.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. It's not depression. Depression is giving up. Depression is like it doesn't have a charge to it. That's the thing of depression. That's why you lay in bed all day. It's a blankness and a sort of, it's weird as well. I think this is another thing that is of its time, right?

Which is people talking about depression as if, oh, your depression, because people didn't talk about mental health and depression and stuff like you'd go, oh, your music's a bit depressing. You wouldn't make it. You wouldn't, it's like, imagine the amount of work that went into this stuff. And the amount of work that goes into her vocals and her lyrics and all this kind of things, you're not going to do it. If you're depressed, you're just not going to get it together to do that. And nor should you.

Especially in a climate like Bristol. Right. Exactly. The sun comes out thrice yearly. You get two days a year of sunshine. And it's like, yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah, it's an odd thing. And I think it's a thing that thankfully has been sort of left in the past. Yeah.

That idea that melancholic music is, somehow the product of someone unable to deal with depression. You know, it's a crazy sort of concept. Well, to wrap that out, the last thing she said was, I'm not trying to save on psychiatrist bills. It's more me asking, does anyone else feel this way? Beautiful. And if it does reach the point where it gets uncomfortably personal,

I tend to disguise what I'm saying in phrasing. Yeah, welcome to songwriting. But I love that. Does anyone else feel this way? That's what music is, right? Yeah, yeah. Reaches out a hand, and then you reach out your hand. And you're like, oh, I'm...

I connected with this because they did reach out to see, does anyone else feel the way I do? And you're like, I do, I do. But also that is a classic Portishead in a nutshell, right? You've got, you know, if you think of them as this, the world's greatest working men's club band in cabaret. You've got the young, you know, the little, the sort of young guy at the back,

yeah, right? You've got his uncle sitting there on a chair playing jazz, and then you've got his mad auntie singing. And they are like a family who, somehow found each other and they found each other because they related to what something in each other. There was no, they didn't grow up at school and we got in a gang and then we were like inspired by the jam and started playing. You know what I mean? It's not that. They've got, there's something very unique about their personalities that attracted each other. And I think that's a real, that's

the point of them as a band is that they, Beth saying, you know, maybe there's other people that will feel like I do. It's like, yeah, and some of them are in your band. Right. Right. Okay. We already talked about creating their own samples to sample. There are a handful of actual samples on this record. The Isaac Hayes string phrase from... Ike's rap. Ix Wrap, too. And then Sauer Times very famously has the Lalo Shrefrin.

Lalo Shifrin. Danube Incident. Yes, from Mission Impost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's several other film score samples. Jeff said,

I like soundtrack music because of the kind of sounds they used to create suspense. But I'm not an anirac about it. Yeah. I love that phrase. I'm not an anirac. I mean, Andy Smith, you've got to think, he's the anirac, right? And then he, and thank God for him, and he was brilliant DJ. And he used to, when Porte's Head really hit, Andy Smith would then,

they sort of Andy Smith, the sound of Portishead, compilation CDs came out. This is like later in the 90s, right? And they did really well because they were absolutely brilliant. You know, obviously streaming has killed that business. but they were, you know, there was a good business in there for a while for people doing these sort of compilation CDs. This is sort of a side bar just because I'm interesting. Anurac is a pejorative. Well, it's sort of isn't, it.

It's one of those ones that isn't it isn't. It's like a nerd. Yeah, it's like a nerd. Okay, did it not come from like the pastels and like that or is it not where it came from? Well, I think that. So Anirac is that specific kind of jacket. Yeah, it's like zip up kind of thin sort of jacket. Right.

So it was my understanding. that came from kind of like those kinds of twee bands wore them. I think that actually probably the their sort of etymology of anorak actually would come from

kind of like train spotters so people who would stand on trains platforms all day in all weathers with anorac on looking for train numbers because that's the ultimate anorak but then of course

as soon as you make something uncool it becomes very cool and if you're in the past or if you're, you know, and all those kind of C-86 people who would deliberately tweed, deliberately sort of anti-that, and then yeah, we are anorex. We will wear anorex because they're like the undertones. You know, the undertones that wears like snorkel parkers because they're like the uncoolest thing you could possibly wear.

Oh, I did find it was interesting. So talking about the samples, Jeff was like, I just, I really liked it because hip-hop records did it. Yeah. You know, and he was like, I haven't seen the movies. No, no, because it's not about the movies. Right. The movies are irrelevant in this situation.

It's just what's the sound. I'm sure now he probably has because now he makes films and he does squaring of films and stuff. But it's not. It's just the point about good sample is it doesn't matter where it's literally irrelevant where it comes from. It's about how it serves the song. It's about how it serves. Or does it, is it unusual? Are you the first person to have noticed it?

Is it unusual? Can you squeeze it in there? You know, like when people say, what's her name who did the sort of clear out your house? Marie Kondo. Really? Marie Kondo. It's like if you're going to keep something in house, it has to be because it. sparks joy.

That's like with the three second sample. It's like, does it spark joy in you? And there was something Simon Reynolds wrote about them at the end of 94 in Melody Maker. And I think this again is a sort of slightly,

this sort of, this is like a misselling, I think, a bit anyway. And it's sort of like, imagine a cross between ambient and hip hop, right? Like, I can't imagine it,

but that's not what, there's literally not what they're doing. Yeah. Imagine a Brit version of Cyprus Hill or Grave digers, spooky Gothic hop. A British version of A British version of Cyprus Hill or Grave Diggers.

Respectfully. I know. Cypress Hill is so like upbeat and like... Yeah. And then imagine the sound of bombs exploding in slow motion. That's not bad. We've got no rapping. This is, I think this is Jeff.

We've got no rapping so I'm sure we'll be marketed in the States as an indie band. Yeah, fine. But this idea, this comes in quite early, this idea that they're sort of ambient. And there's these new words that people are starting to use as music journalists in there. Ambient comes in. literally not ambient. There's nothing. Like, do you know what ambient music is?

Yeah. Because it ain't that. It's not someone, for start, it's got vocals all over it. And there are drums in it, and it's rhythmic. And it has choruses and verses. It's like, that's the opposite of ambit. But ambience coming in as being kind of cool. So it's like, right.

Vibe. Yeah, it's vibe. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Oh, yes, ambient hip-hop. It's like, no. It's not hip-hop and it ain't ambient. But go off.

Ambient hip-hop. Yeah. Okay, so there was four of them at this time, just to be clear. Dave McDonald's are. involved, Adrian, Beth, and Jeff. As Adrian put it, Portisette as a team that works together, but Jeff is the boss, and we all contribute what we contribute. Also, just the fun fact, this album was powered by SIGS.

Jeff Barrow said, we worked in the studio in another part of Bristol, which is called state of art, and it wasn't state of art by any means. It was like a budget studio. It didn't matter, though, because you couldn't really see through most of it, because it was just smoke. And Adrian said, we smoked at least two packs a day. Apparently once they opened the door because there's no fresh air, and so much smoke came out, the fire brigade came.

Love that. They thought it was on fire. Yeah. I loved it. It's like a cartoon. Yeah. Again, I didn't experience this until you can talk more to it. But the marketing of this album, specifically in London, seemed really cool.

Yeah, so there was the whole. The mannequins, the blue mannequins and everything. That was Tony Krian, I think, who was at the time doing marketing for GoDisc. Yeah. Although Jeff told me the actual logo, they came up with it. Right, the P. Yeah, the P. Yeah.

which I didn't realize was the parking symbol and he said that's not why they did it but I was like but it's the park yeah it's genius either way I mean I do it's like the name you can like project it's so generic that it's like kind of cool yeah exactly you know what I was thinking about that because at the time

it's not like oh yeah and everywhere and swinging London and we were all every time we turned a corner you saw a blue mannequin I don't remember ever seeing any of it but at the same time I was also working in record shop when playing the album every day so so I was conscious of it But I do remember people talking about it at the time, like it was a thing.

The mannequins. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember actually ever seeing any of it in real life. I just saw pictures, obviously. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the performance of it. By 2019, it was triple platinum. So it's done well.

It won the Mercury Prize. Yes, it did. September of 1995. Yeah. This is pretty interesting. What are we on now? Like the fourth Mercury Prize, right? because 91 was the first one.

Beat out Elastica self-titled. An amazing record. PJ Harvey to bring you my love. Yeah. And Oasis is definitely maybe. Yeah. And Tricky's Mexican game. Big year.

Big year. Also, yeah, leftism as well. Yeah, I thought this was very interesting. And Supergrass. And I Shico, yeah. Jeff liked Oasis. That doesn't surprise me at all. He said, they asked him an addiction to noise,

what do you think about Oasis? Yeah. Who actually admit, he was talking about stealing stuff. He had to actually admit that they put on Beatles songs and right over the top of them. And Jeff says, they're the exception to the rule. I rate them.

I can't help but rate them. Because the thing of it is, they just know where they're going. And they know what they're doing. I think they're out to conquer the world, any which way they can. And it comes... When was that from?

95. No, I mean, that's very... He's absolutely 100% on the money. Yeah. I think... But it makes sense because it goes back to the respect of honesty, right? He's like, they're not pretending.

Noel Gallagher is not like, I reinvented the wheel. Noel was like, I love the Beatles. We're going to be the biggest band on the wheel. world, here you go. I love the Beatles, and I love the jam, and I love the sex

pistols. And here's Oasis. And I love the stone roses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I thought that was interesting. You would think that they would be like temperamentally opposed or whatever? You know, but what's interesting about that from looking at it from a 2026 perspective, is that at the time,

Oasis was such a kind of juggernaut. Yeah. That just sort of wipes everything else out. But also, the thing about Oasis that you have to remember that at the time is that they were selling to hundreds of thousands of people that couldn't give a flying fuck about all the other

anything on the Mercury Prize list. They didn't give a shit about PJ Harvey or tricky or whatever. What Jeff says there that's really interesting, especially from perspective of 1995, is that there was also an element of Oasis where they were sort of uncooled because they were so big, so quickly. That was a bit like, yeah, but you know,

for him, and he's so on. Because it's almost like he's, that's a perspective from now of going, they know what they want, they know how to get there, they know what they're doing, absolutely respect and doing it. And it's interesting, from my perspective now, having talked to a lot of people of my era who went to see Oasis last summer, every single one of them went. And these are lots of the, plenty of these people who would have been at the time going, oh, I'm fucking bored shitless with Oasis. Absolutely without exception, every single one of them came back. That's one of the best things I've ever seen. my life. So Jeff's point there is absolutely on point and it wasn't necessarily a popular, cool opinion at the time to go, yeah, Oasis Fair Play. That's so interesting. Have you ever listened to the acceptance speech of Portishead for the Mercury Prize? Actually, no, I haven't. I probably saw it at the time because the Mercury Prize at the time was like you would stay, it was another thing. You would like stay in and watch it. Yeah. I mean, those days are over. But, No, I haven't heard it. Not since 1995.

It's phenomenal. Again, I never have watched this on television, but they're seated at more like a press conference type table. And they all three of them have giant beers in front of them. I think Adrienne's like, I tried to leave, but then they told me to stay. Yeah. Beth seems, and this is not to besmirch at all, her character. I don't know if she drinks or not, but she seemed a little tipsy, which was very cool. Jeff Barrow is trying to be like very serious and make like a real statement in what I've gleaned to be his fashion of we don't deserve this.

There's no point in picking one artist. This is stupid. Like there's many artists that are better than us that probably weren't even thought of or nominated. And, you know, there shouldn't even be a best album of the year. And somebody in the crowd immediately begins sinking, nobody. loves me. And Jeffrey was like, yes, yes, yes. And then Beth keeps interjecting and being like,

he works fucking hard. Like over him. It's so chaotic. It's kind of amazing. He's getting pissed off from me as a normal. She just said too much to drink again. That's what you can tell you. He works really fucking hard, right?

He works fucking hard. That is beautiful. It's beautiful. I don't love that for Jeff, who is 23. It does kind of make sense, though, when you put it that way, because then it's like, oh, yeah, it's, like, incredibly idealistic the way a 23-year-old or 22-year-old would be, whereas, like, Beth is, like, 30, and she's just, like, pissed and, like, laughing and being like,

that's fun. He did a good job, and Adrian, like, doesn't even... He's enjoying her night out. Yeah. I want to read you a quote from the enemy review of this album. by Stephen Dalton. Yeah. Nine out of ten.

Pretty high. Of course. Enemy was not in the fashion of giving out tens all the time, right? That wasn't a thing. No. Famously, I think the last time they gave a ten, well, in like this sort of era, was the editor, who was then Steve Sutherland, gave a ten to the debut album by Eve. Honestly, can't argue with that. Yeah.

Ten, though. Okay. In the harsh light of time, Portishead Dummy 9, debut album by Eve, 10. One line just really jumped out at me was Portishead's post-ambient, timeless post-ambient. So in fairness, not ambient. It's after ambient, whatever the fuck that means. Whatever that is, yeah. Timelessly organic blues are probably two left field, introspective and downright Bristolian. not a thing, to grab short-term glory as some kind of next big thing. Spoiler.

Paging, Mr. Dalton. Can you rewrite that line? It did. Yeah, actually, it did. It did. Yeah, but basically it was glowingly reviewed, right? I'm sure you remember at the time, it's pretty universally acclaimed.

No one gave it a kicking. No. I mean, beyond not giving it a kicking, it was like, Melody Maker said, They're undeniably the classiest, coolest thing to have appeared in this country for years. Perhaps the year's most stunning debut is what Q said. Wow. They were like heaped praise upon, which again does sort of make me understand Jeff Barrow's Mercury Prize speech a little more.

You know, like, or his just general stance where he's like, come on. Like, it's not that good. I mean, it is that good, but I can see like being. Right, you're like one of two people, right? You're either Noel Gallagher where you're like, yeah, it is the best thing that's Sun Slice played. Yeah, I am the best person that's ever lived. Yeah, and thank you.

Not even thank you for noticing, quite right. Couldn't you've noticed. Because everyone else is shit. Yeah. Or you're Jeff Barrow who's like, this is just, you guys are being hysterical. Well, I think that there was Jeff speaking to Q in 1994 to Martin Aston. And he says, this is music that isn't made to sell. and you think

yeah you could I think this this speaks to everything that in a way went beautifully wrong and right at the same time

for Porte's Head which is they didn't want it or expect it to be anything like as massive as it became they controlled

everything that came out so every press release that was written every piece of artwork although I think that they would say that the artwork was very low down on their list of priorities and it was all about the music

and that's why a lot of the artwork is extremely plain. Yeah. Because they're not one of those artists where it's like well the artwork is as important as a music. We don't care about anything else. And that sense of, we sort of spoke about this a bit earlier

but there is that thing with Portishead where it's like this is odd music that isn't made for everyone but it just happened to land at a time where the sort of critical coniacenti who still had a lot of clout in 1995 loved it and also it just fitted in you know people could people could take it on two different levels you could dig into it and go this is an amazing blend of all these incredible musics that i'm cool and i know about and also you could just whistle the tunes because and the songs are amazing and that's the thing that that's been that was their blessing and their curse because it pushed them over into an audience that they certainly weren't looking for.

I just kept wondering, like, if another reason for the warm welcome was, you know, we had had this, we, I'm British now, as soon to be dropping Madonna-esque accent to watch this space. Lovely. I look forward to it. Lovely. Anyways, that there had been this whole Happy Mondays, Hossienda, dance music sort of surge in the late 80s, early 90s, you know, also cresting sort of with Screamadalica and stuff. And then Brit Pop swept in, right?

And sort of the conversation shifted. And obviously Brit Pop being in many ways a reaction to American grunge. Like there was just a whole thing. And then I was wondering if maybe it was just this hunger for, and again, we've been very clear, dummy is not dance music, but it lives more in the space of the club or post club or whatever than it does in like anthemic rock music. Do you feel that played a part in people being so happy to hear music like this at this exact time? Absolutely, because what it did is it brought together lots of strands of dance music and ambient music and film music and

jazz and definitely not funk but soul and so there was a lot there was a lot of music in there that people could relate to and it didn't sound they they didn't sound like a rock and roll band right and they weren't trying to be like a rock and roll band and so there was definitely it was yeah there was definitely a feeling that this was it was sort of chill out in a way, but it was, you know, very spiky chill out. But it fit, it sort of, I think the best way of thinking about it is that there was a slot waiting for Portabas Head and it hadn't been identified. But when they landed, it was like, oh, we needed that.

Yeah. You know, we didn't even know we wanted it. But that's, it just fit. Right. You know, and it fit everywhere. And so it fit on the radio. It fit in it. It was one of those, it was a bit like when Eminem arrived.

And he could be on the cover of Kerrang and NME and Rolling Stone and Billboard and everything. You know, he could be everywhere. He could be, and smash hits. He played the warp tour here. Yeah, right? So, yeah, he could be sort of everywhere, you know. And in the way, Porte's head were like that, certainly not through their own volition. Machinations.

But they could be like that. Yeah, we want to hit every market. But just in the sense that it was a thirst for what they were doing that would just explode immediately. Yeah. I think that's really, that's one of the coolest things about Porta's head to me. And again, we've sort of touched on this a bunch of times. But the idea that they really set out to do exactly what they wanted to do

with no thought or feeling that this was going to be popular, that anyone wanted it. that it was fitting in with any sort of cultural movement or trend. In fact, like, you could imagine thinking, like, we're getting away with something, because, like, how did this label give us money to make this? Like, this is not a thing that is going on right now. Like, I'm scratching over some hauntingly beautiful lounge singing

with these, like, really intricate song structures put together, like, all the samples. just the way that it was so painstakingly made to be exactly what they wanted it to be and fuck everyone else, it's incredible, but also like really heartening, right? Because then you're like, wow, finally like a win for what we all hope to be the truth, which is that when you make something that is so purely authentic to your vision and what you want to make and not taking into consideration what other people want or think, then that is going to be the best possible thing.

And that's kind of what happened here. Yeah, totally. And it's certainly true to say that there wasn't anything happening like them at the time. Right. There is this sort of wave of slowcore, Spain and Red House painters and Galaxy 500 and Lo and people like that. And those were certainly bands that Jeff and Adrian were aware of and listening to. So there is a touch of that in there. But there wasn't any...

They don't have the groove, right? That's like a stark difference between those, what you've described. That's what I mean in the sense that nobody else is doing this, right? So there's all these things that are coming in, and you can sense the influences and the colors and the flavors of all this other stuff. But nobody was doing, it doesn't sound like anybody else. And I think that in its essence is a thing that sort of blows something like this up in the sense that it's like everywhere.

goes, I literally haven't heard that before. Yeah. You know, that is, that's a whole new thing. You know, that's, and it's, so that adds an excitement to it as well, because it's, you, you recognize some of it, you know, you recognize the emotion and the feeling behind some of it. You recognize the sort of vibe of some of it, but it's not being put together like that before.

And so that's the thing, I think that's really exciting for that time. And also the thing that's just sort of pushed them over into this sort of huge audience. Let's talk about the tracks. And then I want to talk about the legacy. see briefly because I think it's interesting. We start off strong. Mr. Ones. In my mind, it was always Mysterions, but it's not Mysterions. Mr. Ons. It's derived from the Mr.ons, which was a species from Mars, who are the antagonists in the classic 1967 to 1968 British television program, Captain Scarlet and the Mistrons. I never watched this show. I mean, this was like,

you know, even I wasn't born in when that first came out. but it was the sort of thing you would see on Saturday morning TV. Right. You know, they were, so it ran for, you know, a year, but it was shown forever. It was classic Saturday morning, summer holiday, sort of 10 o'clock in the morning. Let's just put this old thing on. So, yeah, Captain Scarlett, you would have heard this music and you would have seen these characters throughout the sort of 70s.

And the music was a good, great influence on the song. Jeff and Adrian spoke to K-E-X-P in 2019. and Jeff said, Barry Gray and his orchestra wrote and recorded the music for Thunderbirds, stingray, Captain Scarlet. They were puppets,

but they had the most amazing spacecrafts and dark music and they had a full massive orchestral score. And Adrian said, I think the Barry Gray had the biggest orchestra. He always demanded the biggest orchestra

and it was really weird because it wasn't for a big program. It was for a sci-fi puppet show. The music is awesome. Captain Scarlet. What Adrian said there's such a great point is, you know, and it speaks to a real golden era of TV when it's like, you know, go, I want a massive orchestra for this, for this mad kids TV show. And it's like, okay.

All right. Sour times, babe, let's fucking go. Yeah, wow. You can't ever hear it for the first time again, which sucks. But like, what a fucking tune to hear for the first time. What a fucking tune. You could probably add that to every one of the tracks on this album. Couldn't you go, what a fucking tune.

But yeah, Sour Times. And then also the remixes that came out Sour, Sour, Sime. You know, it's funny with those remixes as well, actually. A lot of them were sort of cobbled together very quickly because the label demanded, we need four new tracks by Saturday because it was the era of putting out two different CD singles. Right. Well, you had to. That's how you chart.

And so you'd have to bash out these singles. And this is, again, this is something we sort of touched on earlier, but if there is any actual trip-hop in Portisade's catalogue, it's definitely in those remixes because they are just sort of functional DJ tools. Ultimately, you know, it's like stick a break on, paste the vocals over the top, leave it running for four minutes, and send it to the label and say, that's the remix, there you go. Which does show you that obviously Jeff Barrow was more than capable

of making an entire album of that kind of music, but that wasn't what interested him. Yeah, because it's incredibly easy. for him. It's just a couple of loops. Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, you, listen, if you can make a podcast, you can make a fairly decent trip-hop track in about 10 minutes. I can absolutely guarantee it. We'll see about that.

Yeah. I just, I love this song. I think this song, and this ties into what we're going to talk about with like the twisted legacy of this album. But like, I think this song is so poorly interpreted in culture over time. Like, this is a fucking, like, aggressive and scary song, you know? Like, there's no more better way to hear that than there's, like, some really great live footage of Beth singing this song where the way she's, like, growling and shrieking the nobody loves me part in this, like, fucked up a cool way. That's the heart of the song, you know?

It's not this sort of, like, mournful Nora Jones lament or whatever, respect to Nora Jones. This is not a distuous parish, Noron's made some great music. But you know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's such a powerful piece. And that's why I think it's almost like emblematic of their entire early career. You know, it's the sort of thing that people remember. When you sort of say Portishead, it's like they will remember Sour times.

Yeah. They remember those, you know, the lyrics and Beth's sort of, Beth's delivery of all of that. I do remember these coming out and each one did feel like, like a, like a lot of the lyrics and, you know, a step on from the last one in the sense that like this is getting really exciting because you'd obviously you hadn't heard the album at this point but that sense that

this is going somewhere really exciting this is going somewhere new it's pretty special the next song is strangers here's what Jeff Barrow said about it it's got really like a knocky bass drum I came up with that and then from a session I took a

chord of an organ or something like that I put it in the beat and then I used really heavy compression to make it sound really exciting. Where you hear kick drum, everything else goes quiet. And when you don't hear the kick drum and the snare drum and all the rest of the noise in between sucks up. It was so important to dummy. I mean, classic Jeff. Faced drum talk. Yeah. It's called Guitar Center Hours with Jeff Mara. I respect it. Most interviews, he just wants to talk about the process, which... I mean, but that's it, you know, that's this thing, isn't it? That's, you know, he's not, he's not writing the lyrics or singing or, you know,

he's like, he's all about the aesthetic of the audio. You know, that's, the sonics are everything to which we talked about earlier. I think it's, it's less technical. I mean, it's not, it's very technical, but it's not just technical. I mean, he spoke to how important the effect emotionally was of the technical execution of what he is doing. And I think that's like, that's what I'm most interested. it in. It could be sweet. Let's fucking go. This, you know, it could be sweet is sort of two or three years old by this point. It was the very first song completed for dummy. The first ever thing they did, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Beth Gibbons brought this in. It was like something she had worked on on her own when she was, you know, making her own music. This is what Adrian and Jeff said about it. Adrian said, it's really kind of soulful. And Jeff said her tone is really strange as well. It's also the Devonshire accent. The way that she said, she pronounces words on listening back to it. It's really odd. Then they go into like kind of making fun of her accent. Not making fun, but Jeff Barr was like, you want to pint?

I don't know what Devin sure people talk like, but Adrian said, when I first heard this song, I could not believe it. I mean, the sound of it, but also Beth's voice just completely blew me away. It was a massive moment in life for me that I still remember. As the door opened into the main studio, I heard this voice and I thought, wow, that's amazing. This is a great example. I mean, they all are, but I feel like this is a really good one where you can hear what we were talking about earlier about how forward in the mix the vocals are and how you really feel like this person is like standing next to you. And there's such an intimacy.

Yeah. And this again, this is a bit like what we're saying earlier when she hasn't done many interviews and it's go and you think, well, she doesn't need to do many interviews. Because when you listen to these songs, this is what. this is who she is. This is the person, you know, she's right there telling you everything. Yeah. You don't get something for nothing.

No. Turn no. Got to try a little harder. This one also is really like, I can hear the folk influence, you know, with the way, the cadence of the singing and stuff.

I'm going to make a bold and controversial statement. I think Wandering Star is my favorite port of set song. Wow. Okay. I just fucking love it. And it warms into my brain, for sure. It is a warmy song. Yeah.

I love the like marching drum sort of that's like propelling you forward. Yeah. Please could you stay a while to share my grief? This bitch snapped with these lyrics. Yeah. I didn't know this at the time. It makes total sense for me, a person sort of weirdly and deeply interested in God, that the chorus is a reference to a Bible verse.

The King James translation of the Epistle of Jude. This is how the chorus is wandering stars for whom it is reserved, the blackness, the darkness, forever. And this is what the Bible passage says. It's Jude 112 to 113, where God is speaking out the consequences ungodly people face. And it says, these people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm. shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind, autumn trees without fruit and uprooted, twice dead.

They are wild waves of the sea foaming up their shame, wandering stars for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever. Wow. Once again, also, God snapped when he was writing that, babe, because... Right. Just, he's done it again. Pure poetry right here. Bang a tweet from the big guy, Ben.

Bang a tweet. from the big person, the big entity. We don't gender God here. God is beyond gender. Anyways, I thought that was really cool. Because it is really, the chorus is so powerful, for whom it is reserved, the blackness, the darkness forever. And a wandering star is such a lonely, sad image.

But there's also such a beautiful, you know, literally a light in the darkness as well, isn't it? You know, just that, again, with them, this is something that works on both levels. It's incredibly lonely thinking of this wandering star, but at the same time that wandering star could bring sucker to those that view it from the earth. A bit of light.

Beth Gimmons absolutely said, Robert Smith, fucking hold my bear a bitch because you thought that you were goth. Try to outgoth this. Yeah. It would be hard to outgoth that chorus, actually. The darkness forever. Jeff really nails it.

on this as well. He's a king of Dex on this. Oh, yeah. You know, I was thinking about it a lot when I was listening to this and I was like, I wonder, I should have asked, because it's impossible for us to know, again, of people of a certain age. It's like the bankruptcy of it all, right?

At some point, scratching over non-hip-hop music became so unbearably corny. You know, like when we get into the later 90s and early. early 2000s and it's like you can't fucking throw a rock without hitting like a new metal band that has a DJ or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I wonder if to the ears of young people who have sort of like associated, or do they associate like scratching over music with being

lame? I don't know. I mean, I don't hear it that way, you know, because this is, it's perfect here, but I was curious. Yeah, that's a really good point. Because as a sort of sonic aesthetic, it basically doesn't really exist anymore. And every now and again on TikTok, because I am a man of a certain age with certain, you know, proclivities. And certain algorithms. They go, I know what you like,

you stupid old bastard. And I do get a lot of content of people going, and it's like, even my tolerance for it is pretty low as someone who used to love it. But when you go back into this album, that is one of the most striking things. if he's led it lie fallow for a number of years,

potentially decades. That's the thing that really leaps out is this sort of, you know, and all like that. And it's a bit like, I was having this thought the other day of thinking, I think it was probably after watching Beatles anthologies, I wonder who the last band ever were who bowed after each song.

You know, when did that, what was the last date where someone, they finished their song, here's a new one and finished it, and went, everybody went, They all bowed. Like, no one's ever going to do that again. And I think you could probably put that in the same category.

It's like... Babe, don't threaten, don't threaten the loops of time with a good time over here. You think they're going to start bowing. I think they're going to start bowing. And they're going to bring back scratching. We are stuck in... The time stopped when the internet came around. And we're cursed like Sisyphus to continuously push the rock up and down the hill

where everything just keeps coming back. back, so I wouldn't put it past. So, you don't see, nothing's, nothing's finished. Nothing's finished. I do wonder if anyone will ever do it as well as Jeff Barrow did, because to your point, like, my God, this man is the Mozart of scratching over music. Like, it is, it's so subtle, it's so exquisite in the way that it adds exactly what it needs to add.

It does, it is an instrument. It's not a flourish, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and he's not like he would, I'm sure he would be the first to say it. And it's not like Jeff Barrow is the most technically accomplished DJ. Well, he loves DJ Premier, babe. He said he would say, please, there's a few people ahead of him in line. Yeah, yeah.

And there's a little as K-bert sort of doing his business. But the thing about what Jeff is doing is it feels, you never forget that there's a human being on there. So it's not like some technical wizardry. It's like this is a real human. being cutting a real piece of plastic on a real turntable and in real time. You know, they're not comping it in later. And it really works on this.

And I think that's why it's sort of so affecting because you can feel that it's always on, there's an edge of chaos to a lot of portless head, which is the thing that is very appealing about them. You know, because it could fall apart at any moment. I have a good quote about the scratching, particularly on Wondering Star, Jeff Arrow said, Wandering Star kind of needed a solo, so I just kind of scratched the start of Magic Mountain.

I wasn't really ever a scratch DJ as such, but I was always madly into DJ Premier. You don't need loads of notes to make it sound cool, and that's what Premier did with his scratching. He didn't have to do anything. It was an incredible technique, but still it would just be so cool. He's the most soulful scratch DJ that's ever been. I think that's a good distinction, right? That's kind of what Jeff seems to have been trying to do is be a soulful scratch DJ. Yeah, right.

There are absolutely 24-year-olds listening to this and being like, what in the fuck are you talking about soulful scratch DJs? Well, they probably just fast-forward it through this bit. Who is DJ Premier? Who is DJ Premier? Who's Jeff Barrow? What scratching? And I respect you guys, the 14, 24-year-olds that are still listening to Hour 7 of this Portisad podcast. God love you.

Okay. The next song is It's a Fire. I think besides it could be sweet, this is maybe even more than a new. it could be sweet. This is the most Beth Gibbons folk musician song on the album. This was, again, one of her own

early songs. I have to note that this It's If I was not included on the UK release of dummy. It was a B-side to Sour Times. I wonder why. Do you think because it was tonally sort of didn't fit in

with the rest of the album? Yeah, I think probably. Maybe there was a thing about wanting to have a different version for the US. Maybe there'd been some albums sold on import and there

wanted to sell them again to people so they put a different track on the album. I don't know. Hard to say the machinations. Things no one can understand these dates except for Taylor Swift. Yeah. Breathe on, sister. Breathe on is real Joni Mitchell hours. Yeah. So I get it. Jeff said,

Beth wrote it entirely. I think she got a beat tape off Andy Smith, DJ Andy Smith, that had just some loops on it and she just sampled it up and looped it in a really weird place. It's great. I wish I had done that. You played the really wobbly bass stuff, which is the majority of it.

He's talking to Adrian. You've worked out the weird kind of chords that she had. I can remember the session really well, too. They have an organist on here, Gary Baldwin. He said, Gary Baldwin is an East Ender, a proper kind of cockney. And Adrian said, I had a tune in a band that had the word sneaky in it, but I can't remember what it was. So I would say something like, okay, a bit more sneaky. And Jeff goes, then he goes, what?

Like this? And you could hear these two old cod going at it. What Gary had was just amazing expression. He could make his organ just go from barely audible to absolutely take your head off. Cockney organist, saving the day. Cockney organist. Where would we be without them? Right?

We talked a little bit about NUM, but it really is a great song. Again, unclear to me why it would be the first single, because I don't think it's like the most grabbing song. But it's an incredible song. the way it ends, the outro is just so like I thought about it for a long time after these rounds of listening to it and you know back then we didn't have lyric sheets

and I'm pretty positive Porter said definitely didn't include lyric sheets like that wasn't their thing so like I never knew what she was saying at the end she's saying a lady of woe a lady of woe Right. A lady of woe. Lady of Woe.

The Yossi's Alex story. I think the thing about numb is it's as you say, it's not meant to, I mean, it's very poor his head, isn't it? To put out your first single and it's a bit like, what even is this? Do I even like it? It's sort of absolutely emblematic of who they are as people to drop something odd and quite difficult. Right, challenging. as the first thing. Yeah, it's the first thing. You know, that's what they want. That's what they want to be. That's what has been forgotten largely about this record, is that it is an odd and challenging and dark and mysterious and weird record, but it also has incredible tunes and sort of swing and life to it, which means you can largely ignore all the oddness and the darkness and the darkness. It's a real airplane medicine. situation. Yeah.

It's a wrist slasher and a toe taper. It's a wrist slasher. It's a wrist slasher and a toe taper. That's what they should have stuck on the sticker for dummy, just slapped it right on the front. I'd have had that on the hype sticker. You should have been doing marketing. If they'd ask me.

Go beat records. Go beat, yeah. Roads. Yes. Fuck me all the way up, fam. Yeah, roads. I mean, fuck. I mean, Rhodes, Fender Roads.

Fender Roads, the title is a reference to the Fender Roads, clever. Yeah, very clever. I see what you did, guys. Yeah, that was the one, that's always been the one for me that just like, in a way, it's very different than the other tracks. In a way, it's sort of almost more, it's kind of more simple, in a way. It's more like a just a sort of simple little three-piece band playing. It's a sort of devastating piece of music.

And I remember that, seeing that on TV was, I can literally picture myself in the room watching it going, fuck, this is like really something. Again, what a testament to this band that they understand so well. As much as Jeff Barrow lives and dies to be like, wiki, wiki, and add a little, like, this song came in and they were like, no, this is like a showcase. of Beth's just incredible mastery of her voice, of her ability to communicate, despair and longing and pain and everything else that's wrapped up in this song

with just the exact right, like the restraint shown in putting the exact right musical backing to it that didn't overpower that is just like, Chef's Giff. Yeah, no tricks. No embellishments. Just raw shit from top to bottom. I got nobody in my side. Surely that ain't right.

Because I don't want to, I'm going to restrain myself from doing any speculation about Beth Gibbons the person because obviously nobody wants that. Yeah. But there is some interesting talk between Jeff Barrow and Adrian Utley from that K-EXP thing. Jeff said it was kind of based.

on when the little girl gets shot in a salt on precinct 13 by the ice cream band and there's a theme that goes with it. So that was his musical inspiration. Incredible. Well, just as if the like lyrical content isn't dark enough, he's like, also this is inspired by a murder, a child murder scene. A child murder. Yeah.

Adrian said, that's John Carpenter. He was like super switched on to just emotion and not any musicality really. All his music was made because he's a director. There's something about that. It's pitched perfectly in terms of emotion. This could also be set of roads, right? It's like what he's saying about John Harbiter. It's kind of sad, but it's not like throw your guts up,

which is something we've always tried to avoid. I don't know, sis. This song is a little throw your guts up in the best way possible. Again, it's filmic, you know, Jeff Barrow goes, you've said it in the past that you don't really want to go to bat to say what a song is about because they are deeply personal things. She doesn't write in third person. It's all her stuff.

So it's really personal. I'm just going to interject between the quotes to note that like there's never any he or she on dummy. Right. There might be one, but I think by and large, like almost exclusively second person. Yeah. You. Which I find so interesting and also like Beth Gibbons, you genius. You know, like you're like, oh, I won't, I'm not going to let you.

Oh, you think you know me, bitch. You don't know me. Yeah, you're right. And then Adrian said she's always quoting. from Braveheart. I'm not going to say that's what it was. But sometimes it could be a bit surprising that she's massively moved by something.

Of course, there's a moving thing, but I always kind of see Braveheart is a little cheesy. It speaks to her. Yeah, that's interesting. Braveheart. That she's Beth Gibbons is the world's preeminent Braveheart fan. Yeah, I guess maybe that week that the interview is happening

or the piece was written. But it also speaks to someone who can be incredibly moved by perhaps almost anything. Right. You know, could be something caught out of the corner of your eye could move you to tears or something deliberate in a film

that's meant to poke your emotions and it's like it actually does and it just happened to be very far at that time. This is like me crying from the moment Paddington Bear took the stage in the West End to the minute that the curtain went up. Racking sobs. Yeah.

Just because you're not even crying about him. You're crying about him. about yourself. That's exactly right, Bibb. Yeah. It's like, he barely needed to do,

he could have just walked on. He actually could have just walked on. He had to sit down. Done a little wave. Yeah. Tipped his hat and I would have imagined if he tipped his hat

to you. I wouldn't have not survived. I wouldn't have made it. He didn't ever made it out the theater. They've had to carry you out in a stretcher.

So true. Broken. She's broken. Broken woman coming through. Yeah. What happened to Yossi? She had to be put in the loony bin

after Paddington tipped his hat. That was it. It was the final straw. She's very repressed. Yeah. Beth Gibbons, I'm obsessed with you. Never tell us anything more about yourself. I don't want to know.

This is exactly all I want to know is that you found Braveheart very moving. These are your lyrics and the one or two interviews you did 25 years ago. Yeah. All right. What about pedestal? Jeff Barrow said, well, when I first came to Bristol, I didn't have any money. I was a musician.

I had nothing but a bass guitar because I've been playing bass. with people making money. Somebody offered me a session in that time in 1986 when I came there. The guy asked if I had a fretless base, so I pulled all the frets out my base because I needed the money. I basically ruined my base just to get this session because it was quite well paid, and I could pay the rent then. I was just going to think about it afterwards and see if I could put the frets back on. That's the only base I had. That's the kind of Jacco-Postorius kind of riff with all the harmonics. It's very much that, and it was the basis of the track. So basically, the baseline of this was created because

Jeff Barrow was broken, needed to pull all the frets off of his bass one day. And that's what he was stuck with. And then that pedestal. A lovely song. Yeah, absolutely. There's a sort of a thing where there's such a strong aesthetic to this album. It can get

to the point where it's a bit like one bleeds into another. Totally, yeah. I mean, sure, if you played me the first two bars, I'd go, oh shit, yeah, Pedestore. For sure. But also there's just a thing where it's like, it's one of those albums that

you consume the whole thing. It's not like, I'm just going to drop in and do Wandering Star and be on my way. Totally. It's like, no, I'm committed. It's like, I've got 48 minutes. It's a piece. But obviously there are some songs that, like,

can stand alone, like, Rose, Glory Box, Sour Times. But they all, you know, it's the fitting of them all together is the thing that, is really attractive about it. You know, that it's, it's an entirely sort of closed world in a way. I really like Biscuit.

Biscuit, I think, leans into that, into my slow core theory. Because you've got, it's very pitched down. Those drums are very pitched down. Yeah. And it's got those sort of big,

it's got those big, sort of striking chords, very pitched down drums. It's a very strong piece. I guess like the main difference to me between, Portishead and Slowcore, besides the obvious ones we stated, is that slowcore is not libidinal music. There is no sexuality. I love Galaxy 500, but that is not sexual music. And I'm not even

talking about, I know many times people have talked about, you know, this being fucking music and Jeff Burr being like, I'd love to kill myself when you say that. But it's not even that. I'm not talking about like this is like, you know, Al Green. Like it's more, it's like, really, it's a there is a libidinal quality to the music. Like, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, quite clear that the people who made dummy have had actual sex with human beings, where there is not always the case with perhaps some of the other bands that we've mentioned. Listen.

No, I think that's very true. For me, yeah. Dean Wareham has obviously had tons of sex as a gorgeous man. Oh my God, Dean Wareham's never off the job, but God love him. Absolutely legendary swordsman. But he is... But I think the point here is absolutely just the sort of just the sonics of it.

Just that... Because there's this idea at the time, you know, 94-95, of that slowing everything down, pitching everything down. What does it sound like, pitch down? What does it feel like to play much more slowly than music has...

Music had been at quite a frenetic romp. And Dean Weremne is all about a frenetic romp. I'm sure, but they are, you know, but there is this sort of just a slowing down. Yeah. You know. They actually talk about that. So Jeff Barrow said, we had the song, we had the beats, we had the parts, but we didn't have any, we didn't have the thing that was the other instrument on top.

There were always records everywhere, and I had a box of like 60s pop. It could be anything, just rubbish that I might be able to take a snare drum for, or whatever. I had Johnny Ray, I'll never fall in love again, and it just worked. I had to slow it down a bit with my hands to make it fit. He said, I really liked the idea of slowing it down and feeling it could be really rough over the top because it's a rough sounding track. Yeah. So literally, physically slow down what he was putting on top of the song. Yeah.

I mean, because that is such a sort of iconic part of that track as well, that Johnny Ray sample. And I think that was also, again, I mean, they do it in Wondering Star as well, but that was the thing that, I don't think that that had been used. I'm trying to sort of think back to that time but if that felt like a new way to sort of think about vocals and to think about vocal samples and things like that which you know we definitely touched on this early

but you know Jeff's hatred and of the kind of take me higher and this is the you know to this is the absolute opposite of that isn't it these sort of examples are going in entirely the opposite direction and being you know having sort of

deep sort of melancholic longing to take you out of that, to take you into a completely different sort of emotional environment rather than sort of, you know, it's definitely not uplifting. No, no. It's soulful in a different way. Yeah. All right, then we're going to close out with a little ditty. You might have heard of called Glory Box. Yeah. Yeah.

Why do you think this song took off in such a crazy way? I think that it took off because, well, one thing is a brilliant song. But also I think that we are back to Beth. And I'm so tired of playing, playing with this bow and arrow. I think that also just the nature of her voice in this, the sound of her voice is, I'm so trying. You know, you probably thought she was in the room. But that was actually me.

I didn't. It was really stunning how much you captured. I just, yeah, you've either got it or you haven't. But the sonic feel of her voice is really, unique and it really comes through on this track. And I think that's why it became such a sort of, you know, if you can, if such a thing as a port said anthem exists, then Rhodes and Glorybox would be the two sort of anthemic moments, I think probably from this record.

Totally. I think you could definitely see that in less honest and vulnerable hands, this sort of singing could feel like mimicry. You know what I mean? Right. where it doesn't at all. Like it doesn't feel, it doesn't strike the wrong tone.

It doesn't feel wrong. It feels perfect for the song. But like you just did it. There is like a manipulation. There is like a stylization of her voice that is, I don't want to say unnatural, but it is something she's doing, she's manipulating her voice.

But it works so perfect within the constructs of this song because it is clearly genuinely serving the emotion. need of the song. Yeah, which I think that would be true of all her pieces. I agree. I mean, there's quite a lot of emotional, quite a lot of sort of vocal manipulation, I think,

across the record. Totally. She's not shy of trying out different ways of singing and different ways of presenting her voice. I think that's one of her greatest strengths as a vocalist, is that she's able to, like, embody sort of all these different styles of singing that all still sound very much like herself. I think another reason this song is so powerful is the lyrics are incredible. They're simple but like so striking. I've been a tempterist too long.

Give me a reason to love you is like take me higher bitch, get, get fucked. Like give me a reason to love you. Give me a reason to love you is such a great lyric because it's like, again, we are back to the The Wandering Star, but it's like you could be someone who is absolutely broken by your relationship with someone else and go, give me a reason to love you in, you know, rather like your relationship with Paddington. You know, you're crying in row, I'm going to say row 12. You were probably in Road 2.

That was me in Ro 12 singing quietly under my breath to Paddington there. Give me a reason. But also, on the other, so disgusting, so terrible and disgusting, Rob, how dare you. Not in a disgusting way. You want to care for the bear. But on the other hand, there's also, you could be a super powerful person who's going, looking at someone, looking down at someone going,

will give me a reason to love you. Right. So what is it about you that should get this prize of me? Yeah, it does feel like that, right? That that's sort of the implication in the song. Yeah. Yeah, it's really just what a fucking... What a fucking tune.

What a fucking tune, babe. Just like, way to close out with a goddamn bang on this... Yeah, right? Arguably perfect album. Okay, let's talk real quick, though, about the Ike's Rap 2 sample that is one of... It's probably the most prominent sample, I think, on all of Dummy, right? Because there's only a handful, like you talked about. It's off Black Moses from 1971.

And then just coincidentally, was also used on a song called Hell is Around the Corner by Tricky on Maxine Kay. Yeah. What do you think happened there? Well, the legend is that someone played it to Tricky in a car and he heard it. And someone played the demos of... The demos of the Poit's Head track of Glory Box to Tricky in a car. And he went, oh, he loved that in that voice. That's his accent.

That's his accent. Yeah. Okay. And that was then, he then went, well, I'd quite like to, you know, spit over that too. Which, in a way, you go, well, you know what, fair enough. I mean, it's not, it's like, a sample's a sample. It's not like Isaac Hayes. No, you don't own it.

Also, just there's said somewhere that, like, this was, I couldn't find it. You know, there's the website who sampled, which I use quite a bit. But I think because it's only around this time that they start clocking that shit,

that like, all those prior hip-hop samplings of this, they're not listed. But Jeff Barrow said, like, this was used quite a bit in hip-hop music. So it's not like it was...

You didn't invent it. Yeah, and I didn't ever see anything. of anyone, you know, dragging the other to say, fuck them for using this. Like, and if that's out there, I didn't, you know, none of my business. But I just thought it was, it's just so interesting that it's like such a prominent sample that came out on two of the biggest albums back to back in a year from the same city. Yeah. If you, Isaac and his publisher must have just been like, this is the greatest year of my life since

1970s. Since 19703. Yeah. And then maybe less prominently, Alicia Kara used it on her song here in 2015. But, you know, it's still out there. Yeah, 20 years later. She's holding the torch, carrying it all. Jumping on that beat.

But yeah, I think, you know, fair enough. But you can also see why the band then went into the whole process of let's create our own. Well, there's actually two reasons, of course, why they went into, let's create our own samples. And one of them being nobody else can use them. Right. Or nobody else can use them before us anyway. But also, secondly, then they're not tied to a loop. You know, so if you can, it can do this for a bit, but then it can also do this.

That's right. I think that was the main reason. It's like they wanted to make it do exactly what they wanted it to do. Yes. Yeah. I didn't think one interesting thing that was noted about this sample on here was that the record that they used, the actual Isaac Hay's record that they used to sample off of was like warped. Like it was fucked up. And Jeffer was like, someone had left it out in the sun or something. And I'm sure they loved that.

Yeah. Just that extra. It had some Bristol dust on it. Yeah. Okay. So we've gone through one of the best albums of all times. So interesting to me, I said I wanted to talk about the legacy a bit. And we've talked about it, touched on it here and there.

But like it does feel like it so quickly went from like this is the next thing. This is so new. This is the rebirth of cool, quote on quote, to being like coffee shop and hotel lobby music. Yeah. What happened there? What happened? Yeah, that is the curse of the record they made because as we've said, it works completely on two different levels.

You can completely turn your brain off, and there's literally nothing wrong with turning your brain off and just listen to a piece of music and enjoying it. You know, whatever, however you want to enjoy a piece of music, it's entirely up to you. Well, he might, I mean, he might do, he might not, I think he might do now. I mean, I think at the time, it would be fair to say that they were astonished by how quickly it was subsumed into the mainstream.

Yeah. And how, you know, but at the same time, they're controlling everything. They can say yes or no, right, to whatever they want. So some stuff does get through. It ends up in, you know, certain TV shows and it ends up in certain films and stuff like that. The things that it ended up in are not like, like, it's like Rhodes is a tank girl. Not a chill out movie. You know?

Not a good movie. Excuse me. I will fucking stop you right there. Great comic. 13 year old Yossi would like a word. First of all. I love Tank Girl, the comic. You came on here to besmirch Jamie Hewlett.

Oh, I'm not besmirching Jamie Hewlett at all. Laurie Petty then? Well, Lori, I have no emotional. attachment too. Okay, well, if you were a 13-year-old girl and you saw that movie, you would have been fucking blown away and thought it was the coolest thing ever. So... That's true. I've missed out on that. That's a crucial part of my development that I missed out on, but it just, it never happened. I think we said it, but there are also two of the songs, I don't know if we've said or not,

but they were in a vampire movie called Nadia. Yes. Here's what Jeff Barrow said in 2010, so still, still maybe not super happy about it. He said, the strangest thing and the most annoying thing is that, quote, chill out thing that's come out of it. For me, dummy is chill-out yuppie shagging music. It wasn't supposed to be about that. It wasn't like something to kind of chill to.

It was supposed to be quite harsh and alternative and noisy. Yeah. And here's what Beth Gibbon said. You write songs and you hope you're going to communicate with people. Half the reason you write them in the first place is that you're feeling misunderstood and frustrated with life in general. Then it's sort of successful and you think you've communicated with people. But then you start to think you haven't communicated with them at

all. You've turned the whole thing into a product. So then you're even more lonely than when you started. But when you think about something like the mannequins and Blade Runner, the only reason they think they're human is the pictures they hold. God, that woman. I know. Her mind. I mean, look, it's a nice problem to have, right? We only want to sell 100 records and we sold a million. They only made three albums and they went away. So is it a nice problem to have? I mean, I can imagine this feeling, yes, in a financial sense, it's a great problem to have. As an artist, I don't know, you know, like, and just taking in what Beth Gibbon said there, like, I can start to see the seeds of like, I don't want to do this anymore.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, also I would come right out and say that I don't think the financial element of it has ever been much. It was not a consideration for them. They're not, that's not who they are. At the same time, you can't control how people feel about your music. To go back to a point earlier, yeah, exactly. But to go back to a point earlier, they controlled everything that came out about them. Right. So earlier on, when we were talking before, I was talking about Pippa, who was running the Go Beat press department.

Right. But she would have been under the guidance of Portishead. themselves as to what she said and what she told the press about them and how she presented them to the world here are these people from Bristol one of them's worked with massive attack you know one of them's a

you know they met in a YTS scheme one of them's a jazz guy you know it's like these are things they built this world they made this record and it connected with people in a way they didn't imagine nobody imagined it would work and so you could go

I think it really surprised them and really it was probably also kind of terrifying like they didn't want this and then everyone's talking about it and I think it's probably it probably is a bit odd if literally everybody suddenly loves the thing you do right? It's like you want someone to go this is too noisy and weird for me

because that's sort of what you want also because it rings false right because you're like yeah good point I don't want to be like I get it Portishead because I don't, but like, I mean, I, in our own ways, I think we can all get it. Like, when I come across people who love this podcast and God bless, thank God, I love that there's people that love this podcast, it's why I do it. But then you get the sense where you're like, oh, my God, like, you have a relationship

with something that has nothing to do with me. And, but it's transposed upon me in a way. And that is also, I can't speak for either any of Porta's head, but like, just reading that one quote from Beth Gibbons, I was like, oh, that, that I feel what you're feeling. It feels like maybe that was like the chilling part for Beth Gibbons. Jeff Barrow just seems to me a little bit, and again, I respect this, being like, this wasn't for you. Like, this wasn't for you a lot.

Like, I don't, like, these, like, his use of the word yuppie is good. Like, I don't respect you and why do you like my music? Fuck off. He didn't say that. This is not a quote. I'm just like reading between the lines. want you to like my music. But again, you can't choose your fans, you know?

No, exactly. You can't choose your fans. You can't choose how people are going to listen to it or appreciate it. You could wish it was different. Yeah, but it's, I mean, it's the classic Kurt Cobain of it all, right? It's like, I made this music out of my alienation and anger, and now all the people that I was alienated by and angry at or, like, at my shows cheering me on. And it's like, fucking dystopian, you know?

Yeah, I'm this week's entertainment. I'm the hot, cool guy this week. Well, I mean, you've only got to look at what comes next to go how much they went, well, we're not going to do that again. It's almost like you're a professional and podcaster the way you fucking slammed that segue, babe. Love a segue. Absolutely. I think, yeah, love a segue. But when they played on Jules's show, one of the other bands that was on the show that night was in excess. And Michael Hutchins starts turning up to shows.

And, you know, and they're not doing, I was thinking about this. I was thinking, why? very Bono attending the Geese concert 2025 with a plus six. Yeah, right. Yeah, you know, Michael Hutchin turns up with a sort of bevy of, you know, supermodels to the show at probably Eves or something that holds like 150 people. But you're immediately, they're just immediately pushed into this different world that they didn't think they were going to be in. And I don't think Gobe thought they were going to be in. Yeah, I don't think anyone was prepared.

Yeah. No one's prepared. No one saw this coming. We're going to take a quick sidebar because as much as we've said the TH word multiple times and again I do humbly and deeply apologize there's just really no way to discuss this without... You have to... It's the elephant in the room. We've got to mention it.

But it's only just now, June 94, that the word is even coined into like, you know, the parlance of music writers by Andy Pemberton in Mixmag magazine. He's speaking about the DJ shadow track in slash flux and he calls it quote a deft fusion of head nodding beats super fat i'm so sorry that i had to say that out loud pha t that's right supa p h a p h a p h a p h a p h a p i love it love that super fat base and an obsessive attention to the kind of otherworldly sounds usually found on acid house records it comes from the suburbs not the streets and with no vocals you don't need to be

American to make it sound convincing. Already, like, everything about this is not Portishead. Like you said, there are vocals. I'm not really sure there's a super fat bass in my understanding of what super fat base means. Yeah. All you need are crazy beats and fucked up sounds and you've got the most exciting thing to happen to hip hop in a long time. Yeah. Which makes sense, speaking of DJ Shadow.

It does. It does. And, you know, listen, I've got a white label promo. of DJ Shadows in Flux downstairs that I cherish and I love it. Introducing was massive and major to Yongeauce. Okay, I have that whole thing memorized. Like, that was like formative. Absolutely.

Brilliant record. Brilliant, brilliant record. Mo wax, if anybody could be said to have put out a lot of trip-hop records, all of which I own, is Mo wax, you know. And they are, there's some brilliant stuff, absolutely brilliant stuff in there. And influx was a fantastic amount. I don't know.

Does it have a super fat base? I don't remember that. Also, it does sort of have sort of vocals in it, some of vocals in it. But it's not the same thing. You know, DJ's Shadow is coming from, he literally made hip-hop records. He is happening to hip-hop, for sure. He's happening to hip-hop. Yeah, he's, you know, he's had records out on Hollywood.

He's had records out with rappers. He's done a lot of, you know, he's done. Porta's head is, like, glancing at hip-hop while doing something totally different. drawing from the glorious work that hip-hop does, but it's also drawing from a ton of other things. DJ Shadow is reconfiguring instrumental hip-hop. Those are two completely different types of music. Well, here's an interview in January of 1995 with Simon Reynolds. The title of the interview, it's in Melody Maker.

It's called Trip Hop Don't Stop, Massive Attack and Porticide. Well done, Melody Maker. And Simon Reynolds says, trip hop or ambient pop? Which do you prefer? Incredibly argumentative. Incredibly offensive to Jeff. Jeff Barrow says, music. Don't listen to this bit, Jeff.

Yeah. Earmuffs, Jeff Barrow. Yeah. Jeff says, music, rather than any of them, were neither. To me, trip hop is experimental music that can go on quite long, and is almost like house music, but hippie. It's people in their studios doing what they want to, smoking splifts, drinking red stripe, going off on one for a couple of hours.

Ambient music has never particularly appealed to me. Push go on a synthesizer, make some noise, put some delay on it, and put a couple of sheep noises on it. I'm not into it. Portisette is songs with an alternative backing track. That's it. Songs we've tried to create with real emotion and not just a bog standard pop beat. Pop means popular to me, and I would hate to be put in the same field as PJ and Duncan. Pause.

Who is PJ and Duncan? I purposely didn't Google this because I was like, I'm just going to ask Rob to explain it to me. Okay. So, PJ and Duncan were characters from a TV show. I'm a bit too old for it, so I never watched it. But I believe that they are from a TV show called Biker Grove. I believe it was byker Grove. Anyway, and it was set in the northeast of England.

Okay. Is it like a soap opera, a teen show? Yeah, like a sort of kid's soap opera. You know, sort of come home from school. Like Dawson's Creek. Watch it before tea time. Yeah. Okay.

But PJ and Duncan have gone on to be Anton Deck. And if you are not familiar with Anten Deck, Anton Deck are the absolute titans of British tea time commercial television. Like unparalleled years of co-hosting success in all sorts of things. They haven't made any more records of any kind. but regular winners of all sorts of TV awards if there's a big shiny floor Saturday night TV show to be made

they are getting the first call they are gods of commercial television nothing could have prepared me for what these men look like okay okay great we've cleared something up Beth also sort of addressed this a little bit in that one hot press interview she said not she did not

address Antendac, the trip hop and massive attack thing. She said, to tell you the truth, I've never thought of us as being in the same court as Massive Attack. I know on their second album they've got Tracy Thorne, but on blue lines, Sharra Nelson did most of the vocals, and her voice is far more soulful in the traditional sense, the word, than mine will ever be. The lads know them, but the only person I've met out of massive is tricky, and that's because we share the same manager. The notion of a Bristol scene makes wonderful copy for you guys, but I'm afraid we don't go down the pub together in a big gang or drop around each other's houses for cups of tea. Yes. She nails it there, doesn't she? It's like they're different people

living in different worlds. They do appreciate what each other's doing, but they're not, it's not like, they're not the Beatles in Hard Day's Night or, you know, knocking through walls. Yeah, or maybe a better, they're not at the good mixer, you know, whereas like, that scene was very much like, we all hang out and like party and go to clubs and date each other and whatever, and like, they were just really living non-parallel lives. They're not slow dive and lush at smashed. Exactly. In 1991.

No, they're not. Okay, I want to talk a little bit more about, I'm just going to pull some quotes from the Beth Gibbons, another Beth Gibbons interview. Right. So there's two, I think, that are from this time. This one's from the Independent. The Independent is the one where Jeff Barrow was sick. Hot Press, I don't know how I got through the,

cracks but Jeff was sick for the independent and they were like okay well she's just going to do it which is also a great a great pointer of the time where they couldn't just they weren't quite ready to just go when we're not doing it then she won't do it yeah yeah it's like you've got to do it the having press still meant something yeah and it was very early right it's you know December 94 so yeah yeah this is about them playing live because we haven't really talked about that and we're I think it's a good jumping off point this music wasn't constructed to perform live and so they kind of had to like surmount that to do it. So this is the quote from the writer.

For a band whose music wasn't, as both Jeff and now Beth have made clear, designed for live, Portishead seemed to make a big impression on everyone who sees them. Does she enjoy singing for a crowd? And Beth says, I get very nervous, but I like the idea that people who are listening to us can see us. She doesn't mind admitting that nerves have made two vital contributions to her stage persona,

chain smoking and hanging on to the mic stand is that the floor was being pulled away. She looks so cool in those videos. She said, we're not there to be a dominating force. I don't like it when bands go, look at us, enjoy it.

You might not want to enjoy it. You might be feeling ill. That's such a great insight into Beth's way of thinking, you might be ill, like I am whenever I go to see. Whenever I go on stage. Yeah, whenever I go out. This was my favorite quote, though,

from this independent interview. He says, Beth Gibbons's current attitude, quote, music is a spiritual thing and it should be treated that way, end quote, seems at odds with such a pessimistic view. No, obviously. It's obviously that. And that's why her music or their music, but also her contribution to the music, is so resonant and transcendent. It's that Brian Wilson quote, which I always butcher. But when when music resonates with you, that's you feeling spirituality, you know? Yeah. Also, I think it's deeply misguided

to look at what they're doing and call it pessimistic. I agree. It's like there's nothing pessimistic about I mean we did you know. We did the depression talk. We had a bite on this before but it's like that's just not how music and creativity works. You know, to say

it's pessimistic is just such a... And I think this is a really good piece and I think Ben Thompson's good writer and there's another piece in this which I think from the same interview when he says if Port had said have a problem at the moment it's an excess of mystique. This is partly their own fault for doing everything so stylishly, but it would be a shame if their drama and complexity got washed away in a tidal wave of noir hyperbole,

or smoky rooms and small hours drinking, which is absolutely true. You know, he nails it. Like, there's more to this than don't just look at it on this one level. And then to go, pessimistic views, like, you know, he nails it and then drops the next nail on the floor and treads on it. Right. Well, listen, nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. God Almighty, ain't that true? So now it's in 1995, Porta's Head is hot and reluctant. Jeff says we might...

Hot and reluctant. Hot and reluctant. That's a new podcast coming. The Aussie's all the story again, just kidding. Jeff Fero says, we might even destroy our own careers because of the things we don't want to do, but I'd prefer that than be a prat for the rest of my life.

We'll carry on making music, whether it's popular or not. The album is the whole experience. it doesn't require any backup of image. They tour North America as part of this. And again, like, The Sour Times was performing well on Alternative Rock Radio.

Like, they are making definitely an impact. They're up there with Oasis. That's who they're being, yeah. This is crazy. They're outperforming Oasis. Outperforming, yeah. By in July of 95, Vox said that Portishead's dummy had, this is actually only in Canada,

but I assume that it probably mapped onto America, had racked up sales of 50,000, and Oasis had hit 25,000. They were like doubly out from, again, I don't want to, maybe that's wrong. Maybe Canada does not map onto America, but as a sign of the way things are going. Yeah. Because in that same piece, Craig Mafflin wrote that piece for Vox. Right, right. And it's the first mention of the internet.

when this story is the internet the internet where fans have set up a portis head notice board on the acid jazz site has been buzzing with reviews of earlier shows

and you go The internet Yeah the internet Well it's in 1995 No I know Plenty of people They've never seen the internet Including me I think probably

In 1995 We had a little We had a little dial up at the school Squawk Right Yeah But also interesting that it was on Acid Jazz

Has their own site Because you know Again that's like That's another part of this because that's, you know, at the time you had acid jazz, you also had talking loud, sort of and Dorado, just to name three, of labels who were consistently putting out bands who were not like Portishead and not like DJ Shadow, but adjacent to all of them. And there was this, you know, the scene that had come out of sort of rare groove and sort of

record collectors and jazz funk and, you know, were bands trying to recreate these sounds from the sort of late 60s and early 70s sort of jazz and funk records. That's definitely not what points had doing, but it's interesting that that's where their music is getting sort of shared and talked about is on fans of this. Because all these things are adjacent.

You can tap into all sorts of these things. Well, anyways, they're touring. Dave McDonald talks about how they had to, like, rejigger the PAs so that, because all of the American shows, classic, people were just at the bar talking, and she's not a loud singer. And they would make her even more shy,

so they had to have this insane PA set up so her vocals were blasting. Meanwhile, Jeff hated touring. Absolutely hated it, despised it. He said, I just hate leaving everything, leaving my girlfriend, my flat, my cat, security, basically, and actually being somewhere I don't want to be.

I'm not interested in seeing the rest of the world, to be quite honest. I really don't want to see the rest of the world. I'm quite happy where I am. Incredible take from Jeff Barrow. Early anti-global. anti-travelist, anti-travelism. Yeah.

He said, the thing is, I like everything controllable. Everything that we put out is controlled. And when you're playing live, there isn't that feeling. It's totally uncontrollable. And that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that makes total sense. Were you at the Glastonbury, were they performed after? No, you know what?

I never saw them. I've been thinking about this recently, and I think, I can't believe I never saw them live. But, yeah, no, I wasn't. Interesting. Well, let's talk about it a little bit. It's actually very interesting thing because I, the Lemonheads episode talked at length about the shambolic and insane Lemonheads performance in which, basically, what happened was they're in the acoustic tent, which is not, I don't even think, where the Lemonheads were meant to play. The Evandana was so late that they completely missed their normal slot. And then somehow we're just like got on stage before Portishead.

where he's like, Dando was like totally hammered and he's like booed off the stage by an angry mob who's like waiting to see Porta's head. And I believe he called them a bunch of limey hippies. And then the Porta's head set was pushed back a little. Basically it's just chaos. It's like their first Glastonbury and like they're dealing with just like Evendand, Hurricane Evandando. They're also playing up against Pulp, which this was like Pulp's very legendary. massive pyramid stage performance. However, this by all accounts was just like an absolutely legendary and transcendent set.

The acoustic tent was packed to the fucking gills. I'll read what Paul Trinka said in Mojo about it. The band took the stage to a sudden hush, silhouetted against a backdrop that simulated twinkling stars against a midnight sky. Within seconds, the effects box that processed their drum sound gave up the ghost, as did their complex digital mixing setup. Then Best started singing. and a soft sigh rippled through the packed audience.

As her voice modulated into the Billie Colony Croke of Glory Box's second verse, everyone spontaneously hollered like a gospel congregation, gleefully boarding the emotional roller coaster. With half their gear down, the band were forced to improvise, with Barrow juggling his vinyl, sometimes using it as a mere percussive noise source. In the packed tent, with the band only occasionally visible,

it was impossible to tell from where some of the noises were being conjured. the supposedly shy, psychically frail Beth Givens was a masterful hypnotic presence spearheading the band's brutal emotional assault which culminated in a crazed, extended attack on Glory Box for the encore. Wow. Oh.

Right. Credit to Paul Trinca, by the way, the way you described that, just like I felt like I was there and it really sounds like... Shivers. Shivers, yeah. Have you watched that Paris gig

that's on YouTube? It's around this time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. April 1995 Yeah It is very much like What how are we going to get them out on the road

And it's like double bass drums Jeff Yeah And what's fantastic about it Is they sort of sound like a different band But also they don't say A single word

Between any of the songs Apart from right at the end But Beth will be like Thanks Or something like that And they go But people want it So much

They want to be in that room, you can feel the sort of heat and the fervor of people who just want to be there and want, already, this is only March 1990, April 1995, right? And they're already absolutely nuts for this thing and like screaming. It's crazy, really. It's crazy. I didn't get to see them during that time. I would have been a little young anyways, but I did get to see them in 2010 and it was truly incredible. And the same kind of thing. It was at the shrine, like just packed like phenomenal. Beth Gibbons doesn't use lighting.

So she's just in the shadows, but the rest of the band was lit. It was really interesting. Yeah. They're not maybe massively enjoying this period of time. Jeff Barrow said, the thing I hate at the moment, and this is like in real time in 95, is that I don't know where I stand. I don't know where Portis had stand and whether we've turned into an ugly money-making monster without us knowing it. Hopefully it hasn't because some people say that because we've sold records.

And I don't like it because for me, Making the next record is more important than anything. Personally, I make records to drop the tunes that people are going to be into, people who are similarly minded to myself. And when it goes across the world and you've got little kids asking for your autograph, what's it turned into? Yeah, there's a sort of element of heartbreak, isn't there? When it's like, he's done this thing and people love it,

but lots of the wrong people love it. And now he's got to go out and sell it. And sign autographs. And sign autographs and travel all the time. stay in probably not that great hotels. Yeah, being a van. And also trying to make this, you know, they're not, they didn't come up playing, you know, 300 shows a year, and then it broke.

And it's like, well, we can just come out and do, it's like they didn't play any shows. They weren't meant to play shows. Right. This was a project, a studio project. It was absolutely 100% of studio project. And then it's like, no, you've now got to go out and flog this record that you sort of, not that you don't like, but, you know, I've got to go and flog this record to people. And also, everybody, you're not going to get the joy of sort of turning an audience around.

Like they've already been turned around. Right. Like they're already salivating at the idea of you being there. Except in America where they're chatting at the bar. Yeah, but they're still probably into it. They're just like booze, you know. In that same interview that I just read the quote, the interview asked, what five words would you pick to describe Portishead?

Toss, wank, bollocks, shandy, lightweight. And she goes, not the... Classic, yeah. She's like, the band, not you. And he goes, I don't know, paranoid, wary at the moment. And she goes, wary, and he goes, weary? Which I thought was really funny. He's like, trying to be like, did I say the right word?

And she goes, wary as an unsure and distrustful. And he goes, yeah, wary of people. What would be held back? And she goes, constrained. And he says, yeah, constrained. And worried. Most probably worried. And that's sort of the sentiment.

that they're like stewing in when they finish touring and over the next period where they're making the next album, I would say. Yeah, Jeff talking to Melody Maker in January 1995 and he says it's just that they don't tell you about all the bullshit being mobbed on the street.

That's just nonsense. Appearing on top of the pops, turning up at the right parties, doing the right lines of white material. We might even destroy our own careers because of the things we don't want to do. But I'd prefer that to be a pratt for the rest. of my life.

Exactly. Gorgeous. Beautiful. Well, let's talk about the second Port of that album. Yeah. Self-titled. I say this every time,

but I think it's worth noting. Like, the difference between 1995 and 1997 is pretty astronomical. It is huge. Like, it's hard to overstate how much changed.

I mean, we talk about it a lot in the Brip Pop episodes, but like Bripop died, a very famous and croaking death with Be Here Now and the Spice Girls and Noel Gallagher

wearing his fuck-ass blazer to 10 Downing and the whole thing. But yeah, I mean, the top selling albums of 97 are like Spice Girls, Jewel pieces of you, Puff Daddy, Hansen, Notorious BIG, Celine Dion, the soundtrack to Space Jam. But then within the world of Portisette or Alternative Music, you know, Bjork's Homogenic comes out in 97, probably really importantly, OK Computer by Radiohead comes out in 97. Yeah. The Verves, Urban Hymns.

Urban Hymns, yeah. Chemical Brothers, dig your own hole. So obviously there's an alternative music thing still happening. I'm not saying that. But it's just like, wouldn't you agree, like, kind of a vastly different musical landscape? Yeah, totally. I think that it's, if you look at the across the kind of the spread of the 90s, every year is a very, very different prospect from the year before it.

But for me, it sort of runs aground in, like, 1990s. like the wheels sort of come off in like 96 97 and I think that you know you could definitely see that like 94 95 were like the last year of sort of really good hip-hop albums and then it sort of went to largely went downhill after that that's what I like to call a sweeping statement but I think that's broad you know if you it's fairly broad so this album comes out you know end of September 1997 and if you look at the chart the UK chart that it lands in so it goes in behind Verve. It goes in number two. It went in number two, just behind the Verve. But the UK album chart,

there's six UK bands in that album chart, three UK solo artists and good old Bob Dylan hanging in there at number 10, right? Young Bob Dylan. Can't count him out. Probably with any in his,

what would have been, mid-50s at the time? Ferry, you know, young, just a young buck, really. And then I looked, I looked at what the UK album chart was this week. And in the top 100

of the UK chart, there's not a single British band whose new album is in the chart, right? You know, there's some old albums. They're sort of Fontaine D.C., not an English band, Irish band. Right.

But that's what basically, and that's at like, you know, 96 or something. The top UK band in the UK chart at the time at the moment is Fleetwood Mac's rumours, which is slightly upsetting as it's 49 years old. And then... So it's a very different world.

It is a good album. Yeah, I mean, it's a good album, but Jesus Christ. It came out in 1977, you know, so it's like, get over it, guys. But, yeah, 1997 is a vastly different world from 1995. And I think particularly hip-hop has changed radically. And you mentioned his name,

Puff Daddy. You know, and if you look at some of the sort of big hip-hop albums, and also the other one that, Nobody talks about anymore, unlike Puffy, sadly, is like Master P, who was sort of nailing their sort of hip-hop. And all that stuff just sort of, like nobody listened. It just died. I think there's a sort of, that sort of world has just disappeared. That sort of blingy hip-hop thing.

Yeah, it didn't change. It just, it's, I mean, it became something else. But, you know, all those sort of like mystical and Master P and, you know, Shake your ass And, you know Watch yourself Like Mace ain't the one

That'll pay for your phone Babe May be the one That'll take you home It's so crazy I have like It's just like pressing a button in my mind

I can't not come up with That's actually one of my favorites May Saint the one That's be the one That'll pay for your phone Let's be the one I'll take you home

Even though Is that from 112 What a fucking song Only you 112 remix Let's fucking go That song goes so crazy That song came out When I was in middle school

still cherish it with all of my heart and soul. Of course, of course. I mean, I think the point we're making in a very long-winded way is what we think of the 90s is actually only like four years and the rest of it is something totally different. Like the very early 90s is all Garthbrook's in life is a highway.

It's the middle chunk and then you get to 97 and it becomes sort of like the beginnings of like new metal and Spice Girls and Britney Spears and Boy Bands and all of that. Yeah. And it's yeah. Pop rap or whatever. know what you would describe that as, but...

Yeah, yeah, so new metal and pop wrap and that sort of comes to take over. And Robbie Williams, if you're in the UK. Yeah, absolutely. And this world that had been, that Porte's had to sort of come out of, not that it's, you know, it's certainly not like swept away. It's still there, it's still going on.

It feels like a sort of more rapacious world has come in at this point, you know, and that's reflected in the sort of the puffies and the Britneys and the, these sort of superstar acts come in and they they change the landscape a lot well portishead portishead september 29th 1997 comes into this world this was a difficult album to make i don't think i would be overstating to say that jeff said people used to say to me god it must be really hard coming up with a follow-up to dummy the main point is i don't know why dummy was so successful although i know beth's vocal is

80 90 or 100 percent of it i just made that record the way i thought it should be i don't know know how to make something that's going to be a success. And even though it's been three years since dummy, we've pretty much worked every week in the studio trying to get stuff together. I had a holiday in mid-95 and I've been in there ever since. Even through all this time when nothing worked, a year or whatever, I was still going to the studio every day and working and it was hell. Okay, people have to lay tarmac for a living or whatever, but for me personally, mentally it was hell. It's not working. There's like a year of just like banging their heads against the walls, what it sounds like. Yeah. Unlike a lot of bands, it's we can't make another one like that one.

Right. We don't want to retread. We don't want to retread. And we would also quite like to maybe throw off a lot of people that are currently clinging to our spaceship. We don't want to give them another lounge, lounge music for the hotel lobby part two or whatever. Ain't no lounge. I mean, there sort of is. But, you know, that's... I do think that in a subtle way, this album is even more prickly and challenging than dummy for sure. In fact, I think they got the balance maybe exactly right to where they wanted it because it wasn't as popular. Yeah. It wasn't as Gen Pop approved.

Adrian said, we were hearing a lot of these kinds of sounds that we had made and we needed to move on to your point. But there's obvious reference points that we have as a band, an identity, a sound. and we couldn't totally change everything just for the sake of not doing what we did last time. It was intensely difficult at times. We decided to use all our own samples, and that was difficult too, because we actually did get bored of the sounds we were making.

And it's really unwieldy the way we make records, like walking with one Wellington boot full of concrete a lot of the time. This I thought was really funny. And then Jeff Barrow said, I never realized that I was personally putting other people through hell too. My head just bombed right out completely and totally. I overanalyzed everything. Nothing was good enough for the second record.

I couldn't face sitting at my computer in the sampler. The only thing I enjoyed was when Aide turned up his guitar and I got on the drums and basically we just smashed the hell out of everything. Yeah. I mean, the pressure, obviously... Exactly. Everyone said you made the world's best and most perfect record and now they're like, okay, now we'll make another one. You know, you've built up your whole life to make this your one thing. And then within like a year, six months, two years, whatever,

you've got to find that again to release another record. Yeah, now make another one And you don't want to use any of those sounds But those sounds are the things that you love You know, and that's where You know, the whole sort of arguments about Should we use a theramine or not Right

There's a whole There's a whole talk about Back and forth about should we use the theramine Yeah, and you go Well, and obviously they come to the sensible conclusion Which is yes, of course you should Because we love the sound of it And why should we use it?

Right, and you can make it sound different Which I think they did Yeah I enjoyed that at the very ended this, what basically happened was Jeff Barrow said that Adrian kind of saved the day. He said, I basically needed a kicking up the ass and

to be told, we can make a portis head record and we can enjoy this. And that's what Adrian did. Yeah, you can make a portishead record just don't make another dummy. Exactly. Like, let's stop over-thinking this. Yeah. So they used no samples at all on this record except for on only you. They have the far side sample

and then there's another sample on there as well. Yeah, there's in the alleyways. Ken Thorne, 1968. That is from the Inspector Cluso soundtrack. The Pink Panther. Pink Panther, yeah. But interestingly, it's Alan Arkin as Inspector Cluzo, not Peter Sellers,

not Blake Edwards directing it, and not Henry Mancini doing the music. This was like the total flop of the... Maybe that's why they use it because they were like, no one will remember this one. Exactly. No one remember. We'll get away with it. Yeah.

There's just a lot of quotes here about how it was torturous and they analyzed everything. and I'm not going to like, I guess if I read them all, it's going to re-invoke the feeling of probably what they experienced making the album, so we don't have to do that. I did notice that Jeff Barrett talked a lot about, like, that they're trying to create an atmosphere and that, like, it's a lot about the sound between the hi-hat and the snare that you can't hear. I do feel like this album, I don't know how to say it,

but it is more of, like, an atmosphere. not a more palpable atmosphere, it's just more of like a, like a walking into a cloud than maybe where dummy feels like I can see and feel all the contours of dummy, where this feels a little bit nebulous to me. Yeah, you're walking into a cold cloud, I think, yeah, for sure. Dummy feels like all sort of different rooms in a house with some sort of low lights and colors and reds and blues and blacks. And this feels much more like you're in a sort of cold, compressed air of a spaceship somewhere

and you don't know where it's going. It's very recognisably them. I mean, that's the thing. You know, it's a bit like going back to the first album just very briefly, just one of those remixes, that Airbus remix, which is just their mates from a band at school, which is just wonderful that Jeff gave them that thing. But it's like he didn't play them the track.

he gave them Beth's vocal and then they did the version of it but it still just sounds like a Portishead record because it's Beth singing and however much they wanted to try and change and tried to try and change and did change it's unmistakably

Portishead right from the rip I mean all mine is like I mean all of them you know they're all this is you can't they can't stop themselves

being themselves however much they might try and mess with mostly with the program. I think all mine is probably the most pop moment on the album in my estimation. I do feel like, like I said earlier and I just want to say it again,

it is more challenging this record. Oh, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah. I noticed it even vocally, like it feels like everyone contributed to like, let's fuck this up a little bit even more because even Beth Gibbons' vocals are like, shrill is not the right word, but do you know what I'm saying? It's almost they're like, they are less pretty.

Yeah, yeah, totally. It feels like that was very intentional. Yeah. They can be not, I mean, abrasive feels a bit strong. Yeah. I know what you mean, though. Yeah. They're deliberately, not pretty, as you say.

They're deliberately challenging and in your face in a way that the other one was in your ear and this one's in your face. Yeah, it's almost like walking through like a rose bush, right? You're like, oh my God, so beautiful. Roses smell so good. Oach, ouch, out. Thorn, thorn. Yeah. It's also incredibly painful.

Yeah. But I think this album's kind of underrated. I mean, again, it charted well, but I think that was the classic thing of like, it's charting on the back of dummy. It's not charting on the back of its own thing. But, you know, people don't talk about this album much. No.

And I mean, I can remember at the time, you'd sort of that, I mean, you know, this is a great curse for bands as well, but it's, you know, 1997, you listen to something totally different. And that's not to say this isn't a great record. but also this classic kind of because the music press was still such a big thing at the time but it's like when you're when you're hot and new you're everywhere but if you're coming back on album two it's very hard especially if you don't want to especially if you're not playing the game

you're not playing the game right you're yeah you're very deliberately not playing the game but also I think within the band themselves they want to go somewhere else they want to change what they're doing and change who they are you know I hadn't listened to it that much I got to be honest at the time, but I've listened to it a lot recently, obviously, and I just think it's a fantastic record. I mean, they haven't made any bad records, but this is a, I listen to this more than, I would listen to this more than dummy for my own personal enjoyment, maybe just because it's just that has that element more of sort of freshness for me. Yeah, I get what you're saying. Like it is, like I can sing every word to dummy, but maybe not so much on this one, you know?

Yeah. Man, half day closing is such a cool and a weird song. Yeah. Dave McDonald, because Dave McDonald produced his album, he remembered, he said, right at the end, Beth starts singing a high note, and it goes right off the scale. It was the most amazing sound I've ever heard. It went past distortion to somewhere else I haven't got a name for. You know, morning air, which is beautiful, I love that kind of morning, M-O-U-R and morning M-O-R-N.

Yeah. But morning air and over, they've been playing live for like two, three years by this point. there's a real sense of this is a band that have they've really fucking been through it right they've been through the ringer for sure yeah they've really been through the ringer I think the fact that they actually

managed to make it is a great testament to them as you know human beings because it was not an easy task to come back and do another one after that I wouldn't put anything past Jeff Barrow's will you know no I wouldn't

I have great faith in the will and steely reserve of Jeff Barrow to accomplish what he is setting out to accomplish, you know? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And then again, like, it's something that he said when I was chatting with him, but also that, like, I think is true of all great bands is that, like, it is an alchemy of three people bringing.

Yeah. And without the alchemy, like, there is this, there is the engine that's Jeff Barrow, but, like, even what I said above about Adrian having to come and just kick him in the ass and be like, okay let's fucking get on with it like let's stop over thinking it and beth bringing her like special thing to the table like it wouldn't be what it is you know one person couldn't have just done this yeah i love over i think that's this is my favorite one on here i'm sorry to say the word filmic

even though that applies to most of porter's head but like this one i just also love the way she says uncertain tte uncertain yeah i love that oh this uncertain that's like a throwback to what adrian saying earlier, isn't it, the way she will pronounce certain words. But then you, every time I hear that, fantasy, uncertainty. Because that's not an accent thing. No. That's not like, you know, it's not like, oh, well, there you go with the Devonshire accent again.

That's like a thing. That's like one of her things. That's like her version of putting a long in the exact right place. You know, it's the exact right sound to add to the song. But it's also like a genius way of turning. the end of a word into like a hook You remember it

You know, it's like fantasy It's just like Where does that even come from? Humming is the song that we were alluding to earlier That has the pheromine on it Adrian said there was a moment where we questioned if we could use that sound Thehermin

And the decision was ultimately up to Jeff If he'd said no we can't we would have dropped it Then we thought So we shouldn't use it because on the first album Does that mean we shouldn't have Beth singing because she was singing on the first album or guitar because we had guitar on the first album? The theremin is a sound I love

and I got really pissed off with people going oh, everybody's using pheromans. It's a voice we have. And we all finally decided, fuck it. This is one of our sounds and we're going to use it. Fuck it. Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent the right decision.

Yeah. And I'm glad they did because why shouldn't they? You know? I agree. They completely sort of brought that voice into music again. It would have been a shame to not have not had that in there. Another note about humming is that those pizocato strings

that are on there that cost a great deal of money to record with a full orchestra at the studio where that was then copied onto a cheap cassette so that thing could sound lo-fi. Can you imagine that you're a member of this orchestra and you show up for work and you're like, yes, beautiful, I'm going to shine, my pizicado strings are going to.

to be on this Portisette album and they're like, yes, thank you so much. And then they take your recording of your crisp and clear and beautiful strings, and they put them onto a cheap tape and be like, we wanted to sound like this. Yeah, and we're going to chuck this tape in the back of the car for a week and let it kind of warm up a bit, and the tape to get a bit stretchy. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the beauty of what they're doing. We've said the DNA of Portishead is still all over this from the pherom and from the sounds.

A hundred percent. Even the far side sample is like, listen, we haven't forgotten, like, who we are, where we came from. It's the song She's side. And I love it because it's a vocal. It's like using the vocal sample as sort of, it's very cool. Only use it. I think only is the biggest song on here, actually.

I don't know if it was the single, but we suffer every day. What is it for? Amen. Amen. Beth Gibbons. We suffer every day. What is it for?

I also enjoyed that Western Eyes, which is the last song on here, is listed as having a sample of a song by the Sean Atkins experience called Hookers and Gin. Whereas Sean Atkins was just their mate, who was a singer, and they recorded this song with a cocktail band and slowed it down for the sample. So it's not really sampling anything since something they made themselves, but they gave it a little credit.

Yeah, no, but also it sort of highlights the brilliance of doing that. You can, creating your own thing to then sample it. And obviously it's a very sort of obvious thing when it's a voice like that, Sean, who obviously sadly died in 2023, but it's such a brilliant little moment to have created that thing just for that, just to have that hook. You know, it's a wonderful way. I think it's such a, Western Ice is such a great track. It's a powerful moment, actually. I think if you're a Porta's Head Head, if you'll forgive, you have a relationship with all three albums, all four, if you count the Roseland Live, because I think that does have a life of its own as well.

Yeah, absolutely. But if you're sort of like a portis headlay person and you just know dummy and like you're not really familiar. Yeah, and that's fine. You know, if you are someone who's never ventured further than dummy, you could definitely get some enjoyment from the other two stroke three albums. There'll definitely be things in there for you, maybe not the whole thing of all of them. But then again, also, I wouldn't be at all surprised to people who are really into dummy who've invested emotionally in dummy would really get a lot out of where the, these same people want to take you with this other music they've made. Because if you trust them enough with that, then trust them on this as well.

Because they're not going to take you anywhere that isn't great. There are no terrible moments on any of these records. There's no duffers on them. No. And I can't wait to talk about third because talk about, like, how about challenging? Talk about like, oh, you wanted another, you waited all these years from another porous album. Here's this bitch, you know? But I know there's, you know when we were talking about how people, this sort of idea of pessimism and depression and stuff like that, and there's a review of this, that Caroline Sullivan review in The Guardian of this record when she says the lack of printed lyrics is probably just as well.

Since seeing Gibbon's soul bared on paper might cause it even the most sympathetic soul to wish you'd get a grip. Right. And then you go, I mean, okay, let's, but like the idea, again, such a wrongheaded thing. But the idea that someone should get a grip is such a sort of ridiculous way to think about music. Like the whole point of it is this person doesn't get a grip. That's why it's good. You know, because people with a grip, it's like they're not going to be making great art. You know, it's the people without, more people with no grip is what I want.

Bring it in for 2026. Gripless people, 2026. Gripless people. I'm here, babe. I'm right here at your service. No grip. No, zero grip. Just failing grip on reality.

Never had a grip. Yeah, never had a grip. While I did say it wasn't as like popular an album, which I think is a fair estimation, it was very critically well reviewed. So I don't want to like misspeak about that. Like kind of across the board, it was like Guardian gave it five stars, you know, Entertainment Weekly gave it an A. And I mean, gave it an 8, which is not a 9, but it's still a pretty high score from that.

I mean, pitchfork, 8.2. That's an old pitchfork. I mean, it's a great record. You know? Yeah, it's a great record. Deservedly so. I just didn't want, I didn't want to, like, be misleading to say when I was saying it wasn't as popular, that it wasn't as critically popular because it absolutely was. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it's not a billion miles from the first record, really. No, I think it's deeply in the wheelhouse of the second. of the first record. Yeah. Everyone's still doing kind of what they did on the first record just in a slightly

more bleak atmosphere. But I think they hit their goal of not making the same record again. Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not like, it's not a radical reinvention.

Right. But it's definitely a step on. It's definitely not dummy part two because you couldn't, dummy part two would be, that's an awful idea. You know, you can't improve on it. No.

And trying to reinvent it would be, it would just, I think it would flop. Sonic Leaf. It would be a fool's errand. So they do these three live shows at the Roseland Ballroom in New York. Spaced out. It was like, I think July 24th, 1997, April 1st, 1998 and July 3rd, 1998.

And they play with members of the New York Philharmonic to play the orchestral arrangements there. And this is recorded and then called together for the Roseland, NYC Live. album. What's your feeling about this live album? I hadn't ever really spent any time with it and I listened to it for this and I think it's fantastic. I know that there are people associated with the band who aren't that keen on it. Like Jeff Barrow associated with the band, the main person of the band who said, I didn't like what we did that day. It was overblown and pompous. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, Jeff. And yeah, and I, and I, and, and I, and, and, and, and, I, and, and, and, and, That was sort of, it's funny really, but I suppose, I mean, that's just one of the great differences between being in a band and listening to a band, right?

Because you can go, totally. I did like this and this didn't work and the recording wasn't great and we had to remix it quickly and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these kind of things. But when you look, I think as a sort of document of a band, perhaps you could say at the height of their live powers, who knows, right? I mean, you know, they change so much as a live band as we've been saying, you know, when they started out as a live band, it was a very, very different prospect from what this is.

But I just think it's a fantastic record. But it's got a lot of odd moments on it. Yeah. You know, the sort of clapping along moment is that's one that blows me away every time when they sort of clap along on the beat and then sort of kind of give up halfway through. Can't anybody see it?

Yeah, I love it. I love it. I think it's a great record. I do too. I think especially given the fact that like pre there being like these, the YouTube uploads of live shows from this era, like, you know, if you didn't get to see them play in this sort of like concise, tight timeline in which they played most of their shows, it's such a nice historical artifact to have to be able to go back and be like, okay, These two albums exist with, like, a massive amount of studio care and perfection applied by the band. And then here's the living, breathing sort of organic expression of it. And I think that's a really cool thing to have. I mean, I respect Jeff Barrow's opinion, and he is entitled to it. And I'm not in Port-Sad. I didn't make these songs.

For example, I can't listen to one single fucking minute of this podcast without wanting to put rocks in my pockets and walk into the ocean. So I understand. Sure. I recognize that feeling. Who is this idiot? Who is this fucking dumb bitch? Why does she talk like that?

Why are those her thoughts? You know? And then just galaxy brain, who cares? Yeah. As the myth goes, and the myth as cemented in the New York Times article around 2008, was that after they toured, they mixed this live album,

Jeff and Adrian. and then Jeff said, I have not listened to it one single time since and then after that they were like, bye, and they all scattered. The three of them were like, bye-bye. See you later. I think it was also an era

when labels wanted a really massive kind of event to launch something. And so I think they played in Berlin, a funk house or was at around this time. But then this was like a big, what was still considered like a big press moment. Right. This is a thing that will get us press all over the world and it'll be...

Yeah, they were capitalizing on the momentum that, you know, was still going from Dummy in the second album and they were like, let's make sure. And also, crucially, we'll be able to flog some CDs and some DVDs off the back of it. Yeah. And I think that some of the band's displeasure with it is that apparently they didn't get much time to actually mix it and record it properly, you know, mix it and work on the record. would have wanted two to six years probably. Yeah, two to six years would have been five to six years would have been in a sweet spot.

And it was like, you know, you've got a week. And then also just these songs and the things that came before, the albums that came before this, with a product of thousands of hours of head scratching studio tomfoolery. And here it's like, this is what you've got. And some of, you know, they might not like what they've got to play. and there's nothing you can do. It's like, well, this is it.

This is what you've got. But I think leaving all that side, just as a sort of raw document, as raw as something that's been mixed for a major label releases. This is a sort of pretty pure document of what was clearly a sort of pretty magical night, I think, or a series of magical nights.

Yeah, I mean, the Melody Maker review of the July show, which was the first one in 97, said, no one in this room will ever forget tonight, and that's crucial, because that's where Portishead are right now. It's a place where everything culminates, where everything works, where every detail matters and every detail is perfect. Jeff Barrow would back to differ. I think that really nails it.

Again, because it feels like one of those things where it's going to have a very strong kind of emotional impact on people that. In a way, a bit like where people want the emotional impact. They're ready for it. They're open to it. But it's still, I think there's some startling moments on this record. Yeah, I agree. I really love it. So after this, and also at the end of the world tour that they had gone on, the wheels fall off, as we said.

Like, they scatter. Both Jeff and Adrian get divorced. Adrian said we were drinking lots to get the adrenaline going, and it all got a bit rock and roll, really, which I'm not averse to you, but it took its toll in the end on us. Both Jeff and I, our home lives became messed up. We were divorced. So it's like a pretty harrowing time. Jeff said, we seem to be okay all getting on, but then when I'm a little bit of it, happens is I get divorced, aide gets divorced, and Beth is not very well because she doesn't really

travel that well. So we cancel the tour of Japan, then literally we just come home. And because I was going through a divorce, I just kind of gave up on music. Side note, they were also 300,000 pounds in debt when they got back. Oh, I didn't know. There were 300,000 pounds in debt. Is that a known fact? Apparently. Allegedly. Apparently, that is a fact. Because of studio time or tour costs or... Yeah, I think tour costs. Right. That's what I've heard

on the Portishead grapevine. Well, that is going to... That's going to put a damper on spirits. Yeah, when you've done this thing to the point where you are broken individuals with broken home lives, and guess what, guys, you're also 300,000 pounds in debt.

I mean, you sort of think that that wouldn't happen now. if Portishead were to go out on the road and do a whole bunch of shows, there ain't no way they're going to come back in debt. Nobody would allow it. With a tremendous amount of money. Well, yeah, nobody would allow it, right? Although at this point, I believe they're managing themselves. I'm pretty sure, like, fairly early on, they parted ways with Cameron McVeigh

and took everything on themselves. Yeah. Well, okay, so the vibes are bad, is what I'm saying. The vibes are bad. Yeah, the vibes are definitely bad. Beth retreats back to Devin to sort of recuperate. Adrian gets into some side projects. And Jeff Barrow, I'm just going to say it,

it got so bad that the man moved to Australia. That's how bad it got. I don't think he would say that, by the way. He didn't say that. I just want to be clear that I'm not besmirching Australia on his part. That's just my own interpretation. That's your own anti-Australian rant. It's just a first thing to come out.

However, I totally understand it as it's like an absolutely gorgeous place with like beautiful beaches and wonderful food. And I listen, I'll give it. You got to hand it to them, as they say. It doesn't really work out though, does it? I think it works out in the sense that it sounds like, again, this is nothing from any horse's mouth. But from piecing together, the timeline and the quotes and stuff, it sounds like it did its job in the sense that it was like healing, restorative. Jeff said basically like I just decided I was going to go live my life

People usually have to decide what they're going to do From their late teens to their mid to late 20s When I had been a musician I was like some ginormous child in the outside world So it sounds like he goes and has this like youth That he didn't really get to have Because he was like a working musician Starting at 18 and sort of

You know by 22 signed and doing important things And he set up a little record label With a friend Three years in Australia didn't write one note of music. And in the meantime, Beth worked on music with Paul Webb of Talk Talk

and put out that album. He goes under Rustin Man. It's called Out of Season. Yeah. It's a good. It's a good album. Yes, great record. Yeah.

Adrian worked on it. He played a bunch of instruments, organ, acoustic guitar bass, guitar, electric guitar, music, music, music. Jeff and Adrian also worked on

some stuff together. They produced Baxter Dury album who's the son of Ian Derry and the blockhead Cian Derry and also the band Coral from Liverpool and then in

2003 the band kind of regrouped in Bristol and I think a big part of what happened that re-invigorated Jeff Barrow is that he got really into drone metal which was such an interesting

turn of events I mean I get it it's like for someone that's so clearly tapped in and interested in new and unusual forms of music and sonics. It makes total sense to me that he would

hear drone metal and be like, oh, fuck yeah. You know, like this is something appealing and interesting to me. Yeah, and also something that's totally, feels totally apart from everything I've done. Right. Right. Yeah. So it's like, it's a total palette cleanser. Totally.

So he, when he got back, he set up another label in his hometown and signed bands like gonga, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, and crippled Black Phoenix, which is a side project of the Maguire bassist Dominic H. Jeff said, it was music that I never thought I'd get into. We all went to see bands like Om and I started to have the same kind of experience as when I heard public enemy. Just relentless fucking heaviness. And I thought, yes, this is what it's about. I've got to get back out there. So thank you, Drone Metal, for your work here. And they began writing music again.

And a mere five years later... In a blink of an eye. In a blink of an eye. In geological time. They were able to put out... We were able to put out some music. Yeah, sorry. By the way, I just don't want to be disrespectful to the label.

The label is called Invada. It's a cool label. His partner goes by the name Fat Paul. His word's not mine. and they were putting on gigs and stuff and it was like, Ohm and like Sunno and Earth and Black Mountain

and going to Altamara's parties that kind of changed his view. He also later, we'll get into it, but he also later makes his own sort of drone medley band beak. Okay, in these five years, though, they're working on music. I just wanted to point out one thing

that I found absolutely hilarious. And I was able to excavate a bit of it. Jeff was blogging, babe. Jeff be blogging. during this time. And not micro blogging, like full blogging. Well, I just like kind of, I mean, this is like that weird internet no man's land. I think, right?

Like, I feel like the 2000. Before the platforms took over. Yeah, pre-social media platforms-ish. I mean, we had like MySpace, right? It was like early sort of. Yeah, yeah. And Facebook, I can't remember when I got on Facebook. It was around this time Facebook was also like maybe just college, but starting to pop off.

there was some of my fellow old heads who remember Friendster. But anyways, poured us out of MySpace. They also had a website with like a blog function. It's just charming because there was just like

little updates and this and that. And there was also just in a gorgeous little moment where Jeff Barrow decided that he does not like Mark Ronson's music and he's going to talk about it on the blog.

Oh, yes, indeed. And he calls it shit funky supermarket music. Yeah. That's too funny. I'm sorry. Well, In an interview later

They're like Do you have a feud with Mark Ronson? He was like, there's no feud I just don't like his music I wrote some fairly nasty things about his music But then I write nasty things about a lot of people's music And I can't take the criticism back either I get really annoyed and people don't like my music

There's lots of music I don't dig His just happens to be the most odious Yeah Most odious is very powerful I love the fact in that quote Where he goes I can dish it out. I can't take it.

I can't take it though. Yeah, I don't like it when they do it to me. Well, I mean, I guess he can take it. It maybe just doesn't prefer to. Yeah. And apparently Mark Ronson, like, said something to the effect of Portis Head's no longer popular enough to play in supermarkets. Yeah, that felt a bit like, let's run this past the PR team so you can come up with a good line.

It feels a bit like a sort of prime minister's thing at question time. Right. Someone's got, here's a zinger for you. Hired a few copywriters to get it on that, some copyrighters. But this was my favorite part And then Jeff Barr was like, yeah But then he sent me a Myspace message Asking for a remix

I'm thinking what fucking planet do you live on man We don't get this kind of mess and drums anymore so I just like I wanted to harken back to a purer time Where people were sending Myspace barbs and talking shit about each other on the internet Yeah It's happy days

Isn't it really when people could Unleash their claws a little I mean The idea of a sort of portless head versus Mark Ronson is, I mean, fair plate of Mark Ronson, he's made some great records, but you know, you just wouldn't go near Portishead. It's like, leave those guys alone.

Yeah. You know, it's like they're too weird and too dark to be fucking weird. You know, they're not going to hold back, you know. All right, and then finally, like I said, a mere five years later, 2008, into an absolutely wildly different world, not just musical landscape,

literal world, emerges the third Porta's Head studio album titled third on April 25th. They had also, at this, they were no longer with Go Disc, Go Beat,

they had renegotiated a major label deal with Ireland. Yes. Well, the thing about this is I wondered, why did you end up on Ireland? Go Beat was a subsidiary of Go Discs.

Right. They were subsumed in a polymers. in Apolliore, who were then subsumed into Universal. And so by the time album three is due, because I was thinking, I wonder why they went with Ireland, when they've, you know, they've often had a thing to say about, you know, major labels and, you know, not being keen on them. Why not go with a sort of Excel or with like a domino or with something like that?

And it turns out that, of course, actually, they'd signed a three-album deal. And so they couldn't have gone anywhere else. It was, they had to go somewhere within under the, uh, so this was somehow under the umbrella of the like multiple, the multiple acquisitions that had taken. Yeah, basically you can go anywhere within universal, but it's going to have to be universal. So it was like, okay, Ireland. And the live album didn't count towards. That's why they ended up there.

Didn't count towards the third album. Live album didn't count. Yeah. Okay. I don't want to like hold a funeral for rock music per se, but, and not that Porta said is rock music, but 2008's a weird time. Yeah. That's one way I put in it. Yeah, we're post the last, I feel.

It's not the glory days, yesy. Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends who you ask. I mean, not if you ask us who are old men yelling at the clouds, but I mean, maybe if you ask a young person, because this is, when did Arctic monkeys come out? I suppose that's around about 2006, 2007. So there's like a, there's like a, maybe a little bit earlier. So there's a nice swell of Arctic monkeys fervor.

and people love that band, and that's a really good rock band, that I always say, and I might be wrong, but this is just in my estimation, like, the last big, great big... Last great rock band. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't even, and I don't even mean, like, judging by the quality of their music, which is great, but the last rock band that was able to get big,

that's massive and can play, like, stadiums or arenas or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure someone will be like, well, actually, blah, blah, blah, and that's fine, I'd love to hear it, but that's just how it felt like it shook out to me. And then, yeah, there was the whole strokes, yeah, yeah, yeah's burst in the early 2000s. Yeah. And then, like, again, I have a real blind spot for this whole decade, so, like, I don't know what was going on.

It feels like it was like... Yeah, it was comatose for a lot this decade. There was indie, there was a blog house. Blog House is happening. Witch House is happening. Seapunk is happening. You guys were not there. I might be getting the dates a bit wrong.

The block house is not going to, it's never going to light my candle. But witch house, slightly more up my street. So I would have been writing for like NME and people at this point in Q and people like that. Yeah, who were you writing about? Yeah, who was I writing about? Well, I did write about Arctic Monkeys and Last Shadow Puppets. Sure. And TV on the radio.

They'd have been in there. Oh, yeah, for GMT. Yeah. White Stripes. Empire of the Sun. Lots of people like that. Empire of the Sun, totally. I'm looking through this list

of top alternative albums of like 2008, and a lot of it is just legacy acts. Like it's Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. There's a Smith album, The Sound of the Smith of something, that was not. The Gutter Twins, which is the Afghan Whigs and Mark Lanigan.

But anyways, yeah, it just doesn't feel like a lot of big things where Beach House got pretty big, I guess. Anyways, I don't know what point I'm making here. The point I'm just trying to make is that like wildly different musical M83. Yeah, this was a different time. I forgot about M83. Yeah, I think without, I don't want to put words in your mouth,

but I think the thing you're trying to say here is, and saying it really, is that this lands in a world which is entirely different from the world of the first and the second record. And in all sorts of ways, bands barely exist anymore. Oasis put out their last album, I believe, this year, right? dig out your soul? Was that the last voice? Yeah, bands barely exist. There is a swell of, like,

we just said, MGMT, M83, CSS, like, of, like, interesting electronic music that's coming out. It doesn't sound like this, though, does it? It doesn't sound like this. Nothing sounds like this. That's very true. Yeah.

So, anyways, whatever, I don't want to belabor the point. You get what I'm saying. Yeah. I think there's a thing, though, I think it's just before this album comes out, isn't it? When they do the The Nightmare Before Christmas, the All Tomorrow's Parties. Oh yes, yes, yes.

In Minehead. Yeah. And that is, I think, absolutely crucial to understanding who they are and where they are and what they want to say. Because then you've got like, Sun are playing it, Arm are playing it, Black Mountain are playing it.

Julian Cope's there. Does someone from Silver Apples play? Or is that another one? I don't know, but they were super into Silver Apples. Apex Twinnor. Yeah, Silver Alples is a big influence. As we will hear. Yeah, yeah.

Yes. Almost actionable influence. But the thing about, it's crucial here about the Ultimori Party's thing, is it says to the outside world, this is the sort of band that Porte's Head are now. These are our contemporaries. These are the people that we admire, the people who we like, the people who have been inspired by. And also it says, and this is sort of crucial into where they're going forward because they are signed to a major label. When you sign to a major label, major label want major label shit happening,

i.e., they want you on the radio, they want you to have hits. And it's like, good fucking luck, guys, because this is the record we've delivered. And there may not be any massive radio hits on it. But what they've done is they've aligned themselves with the proper real underground.

Again, there was barely accidentally a radio hit on the first album. Yeah. So let alone. Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, with the under, they've aligned themselves with the other album.

But then again, I like, Once again, I was checked out. She was at Smith's Night. She was listening to Dipset. She was busy. But I don't remember this album coming into the world feeling a part of like a scene or something, right? It was just like a huge moment because it had been over a decade since the last album.

And there was just like a large anticipation. They played Coachella. Yeah. It was, you know, and they hadn't played for years. It was like a big deal in that regard. Yeah. I mean, it was a big deal, but, you know, thinking back on it, I don't remember it at the time being like, shit, they're back.

But then when you listen, obviously the reviews were fantastic. It's very, it's hard to remember because it's such a sort of odd time in music. But the reviews are, the reviews are great, I think, aren't they on this one? Yeah. And people, I think there's, you know, people, they've never, they've very rarely had it. I don't think they've ever had a bad review, really. Has anyone ever gone? Well, this is a lot of old crap, isn't it?

Well, they'd be wrong. They'd be wrong. But that doesn't stop people before. Yeah. Going, well, this is a lot of old crap. No, I think that, you know, when you see it coming out of the Automotive Parties thing, this is who we are now. And then this record lands, and it, you know, it opens with this sort of heavy kind of drone. It's, this is like, okay, off we go.

Yeah, it opens with the sample of a capoeira master named Claudio Compos, reading, reciting an adaptation of the Wiccan precept of the three-fold law, which is translated to beware of the rule of three. What you give will get back at you. This lesson you must learn, you only get what you deserve. Ominus, fits in, rule of three, third album. Three people in the band. Three people in the band.

You did it, bitch. You fucking opened it perfectly. Yeah. Steja alert for the regas of three. What you do return for you. This album is not going to be played in the hotel lobby. No, I don't think there's much chance that silence is going to be welcoming you to Royal Marriott. Yeah.

Anytime soon. Yeah. Not even the standard, babe. Not even the standard. No, not even the standard. Even the standard wouldn't. turn their nose up at that one. Yeah, it's not going to happen.

You know, when you go through the albums, dummy, it's a surprise. Wow, that's quite weird, but it's also very listenable and great. Portless Head, you understand it because what they did before, it's not a huge look upon. This is, I mean, it's definitely not, it's not like, oh, this is a totally different band. This is like everything turned up to its possible limit. And I think it's just brilliant. It's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

It's incredible. It's really incredible. It's so textured. There's, like, way more crags and nooks and crannies in this record, right? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like you kind of are tossed about more than you are and put into, like, a holistic listening experience. I'm not saying it's on an album that you take. There's a lot more sonic shocks.

Exactly. Sonic shocks, which is really cool. The way that you, once you hear that drone metal was an impetus and inspiration, And it's not sonically exactly there, but it is spiritually very much there. Like you can feel like, oh, I get how he transmuted this input into this output. Yeah, the heaviness is there. It's a heavy record without being heavy metal record. Yeah.

I mean, there are definitely there are moments of big, like, drony happenings. But yeah, that's sort of the intensity and that sense of sort of pressure coming off, coming out of the wave, waving out of the speakers at you. That's definitely, that feels like it comes from that drone metal experience. I genuinely think Machine Gunn is one of the greatest songs of all time. Yeah. It's so fucking cool. Yeah.

Like you kind of forget about it and then you put it on and you're like, wow. Like what a visceral experience listening to this song is. With those sort of that kind of drum machine, there's a lot of relentless. There's a lot of relentlessness. But that sort of relentless drum machine kind of grind. Yeah, it's, that's like a single as well, isn't it? I think so, yeah.

Machine gun? Yeah. Makes sense. It's like kind of like, I don't want to say one of the catchier songs on the album, but it kind of is, you know. Yeah. Well, we can certainly feel so, but that's another great, another great Jeff moment.

but it takes such on a very wild, sharp handbraith turns this record. You know, there's, you know, things like deep water just come out of absolute nowhere with just like a ukulele vibe and you're like, okay, you know. Yeah, sure. This is the thing about them that you keep coming back to is it's like, whatever they do, you go, oh fuck, yeah, that's port his head. Right. It's like...

Exactly. Because even though this is a huge leap on in all sorts of ways, I mean, that sounds like it's that much better. It's not about it being better. It's just very different. But it's still unmistakably that band that you loved, you know, 15 years beforehand. But they're just, you know, they're grown up. Yeah.

Like you say, you know, what Jeff was doing it. He was a very, you know, he was a 21, 22 year old guy. and now they're you know this is like a guy in his 40s who's making some heavy stuff with his I believe he's 36 but we don't have to prematurely age him you could feel prematurely age from the you know he's been through a lot

yeah he's been no exactly I think it's exactly what you want from a band that you love is to be able to completely recognize them but also feel how much they've evolved you know like it's such an incredible And Beth's vocals have also evolved, but are still so very much, Beth Gibbons. Her lyrics, obviously, still really, really incredible.

The Rip is a really beautiful song. I think that is, I think it was a single. I'm not really sure, but it is the most... Yeah, I think it was. The most streamed song on the album by a five-fold. Yeah. Which it is the most palatable. Yeah, it's got nearly 60,000 streams, whereas the next closest one is Machine Gun, which has about 11,000.

Oh, sorry, not 11,000. 59 million streams, 60 million streams. Right, I was going to say. No, sorry. Nobody liked this record, you guys don't listen to it. No, no, 60 million streams, and then machine guns around 11 million. But yeah, the rip, the rip is an amazing one, you know, and that, as I take on myself and the bitterness I felt, it's just... She did it again, yeah.

There she go. That's one of my absolute favorites on the album, when it's you just got this sort of simple guitar a peggio, which, you know, like kind of two minutes 20, just sort of turns into this synth arpeggio that sort of threatens to blow up into something enormous. And then it just, it doesn't. It just holds itself, it holds itself in. And it feels like it could go, they could have gone bananas. You know, there is that relentlessness to this album and there's that pressure and that heaviness to this album. But it's also got this sort of quiet power where it's sort of in control of its emotion. a lot of the time.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good way to put it. And again, with zero knowledge or insight, like, you kind of do get the sense, and maybe I get the sense after studying Porta's head for weeks, that this was always going to be the last album. Like, it was almost like we came,

like, it took us five years, like, we came to the table. I mean, even, just like putting the facts in place. Like they were, they owed one last album contractually. Yeah. Yeah. They were clearly very fucking over it.

Yeah. Who knows, you know? No one can know, obviously. And rightfully so, they won't talk about it, which I think is smart. Yeah. But. You could argue that it's a miracle this record actually exists. You know, because I would think that, you know,

yes, they were contractually obliged to deliver another. It doesn't mean to say that they. No, many, many such. of that just never happening. Of course. Of course, never happened. And the fact that they had literally broken themselves in the pursuit of whatever it was they were pursuing over albums one and two, the fact that they could 10 years later come back and

do this is we should acknowledge a kind of a miracle and, you know, the record is a gift. Right. And whether they could ever do that again does feel kind of unlikely. but you know I mean who knows right maybe in five years time another one will pop out anything could happen Jeff Barrow very publicly retired from music so last year I believe he sort of publicly declared that he isn't he is no longer making records or albums he's he is exclusively

focused he even like quit his own band beak or dismantled it or whatever yeah and he's focusing pretty exclusively on scoring films Scoring films, yeah. You know, he had stopped making music for three years when he was in Australia. I mean, look, who know, absolutely. I think it's very unlikely that they were going on 17 years now from this album. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's true.

18, actually. 18 this year. Yeah, that's right. It is, yeah. But, you know, there is also that thing of when people get, I mean, the thing is there's such wildly varying ages in this group. Right. It doesn't quite sort of always hold up.

But there is that thing, you know, when people hit their sort of 50s, I mean, obviously some of them are already in their 60s, in their 60s, in fact. But you can sort of go, should we like, because there's obviously an itch that can only be scratched with these three people in the room, right? And they are. And it's not like they've ever gone, we don't get on. No, no, yeah. There was no, like, fallout. Where it's like, they've fallout or, and also they've also hit that sweet spot where it's like, we don't owe anybody anything we can do. If we wanted to do something, we could do exactly what we want,

you know, we're not under any pressure to anything. Yes, it's all massively unlikely, but, you know, never say never. Never say never, exactly. They've said never. Well, it's a wonderful, it's a wonderful album. We mentioned the influences. There's also some other ones like Madlib. Jeff Barrow's a big Madlib fan, rightfully, so it was an absolute genius.

Black Sabbath, Sonic Youth, Craftwork. Of course. And then, even though it was very difficult to make, like we said, actually, Jeff Barrow said on the Portishead blog, This album has been watching Lost A Neverending Journey with very few answers. This really places it in time, doesn't it? Lost was really in the cultural conversation.

Ultimately, for the very least, Jeff Barrow said that he loves, or he likes the outcome. He said, it's all good. I don't know if Beth's happy, but she seems to be happy, so yeah, I definitely think we're stronger now as a band. I don't know if we're going to get on better

or if it's just me getting older and understanding a bit more of what Beth sings about, but I think we've got a stronger voice now. This was press around the time of the, album. There is something to be said for going out on a high note and, you know, not sullying your legacy. They play what seems to be about seven years of mostly festival shows. Clearly, they did not want to tour anymore. They did do a brief tour in America, which that's the time I got to see them at the shrine here, and it was incredible. And I actually really distinctly remember Machine Gun.

Yeah. In 2010, Jeff Barrow was the music supervisor for the Banksy documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, which sort of kick-started his long, enduring and fruitful career as a film score. I actually, like, wasn't really aware. I just want to, like, read a couple of these because might surprise people. He did ex machina. Yeah, right. He did a bunch, I think, or one episode of Black Mirror.

the film Annihilation, the film Hannah, which I really liked. Civil War recently, which was last year. Civil War, yeah. Good choosy projects, but also all really incredible scores. The last real portis had from what I could gather from my setlist.fm poking around was in Spain at a festival in Spain in July of 2015. Then in 2022 they played a benefit show for War Child, which I believe Tony Crean,

he was very involved in that project, who was the old marketing director of Kobe. And then in 2024, Beth Gibbons put out another solo album, a solo album, because the other one was in a solo album, called Lives Outgrown in May. That's actually also really good.

Yeah, she's good, isn't she? She's so good. I didn't see it talked about a lot, honestly, but... No, it didn't, actually. It sort of came and went at that one. I mean, you could kind of see her not wanting to do promo or press and, you know...

Yeah, she's not dancing on TikTok. Not yet. Never say never, babe. Late stage capitalism will find this all dancing on TikTok. And then last year they filmed a special one-off performance of Rhodes at the Cube Microplex in Bristol in September for Brianino's Palestine benefit concert. They're pretty politically involved. At least definitely Jeff Barrow, as I know from his, you know,

he's never been silent about his political views and sort of fighting for what he believes. And that's kind of the end of the Portishead story, babe. You know, and there is a beauty in having, you know, three records. I mean, if we've three studio albums, you know, Nick Drake, Nirvana, Jimmy Hendrix. You know, there's three reasonable people to sort of align yourself with, aren't they? I was doing this thing recently, and Elton John was part of it. Okay. I was doing this thing of, and 1986 is involved, right?

And I was something about Elton John came into this story about. 1986 and in 1986 he was he did this album and it sort of flopped and it was his 19th studio album that's 1986 and you go nobody needs that many albums right nobody needs 15 20 10 you know you know where you know where i land on this or maybe you don't but i'll say it again i'll reiterate it for myself i think ultimately for the legacy of a band it's much better to brevity is the soul of wit you know like like, economize. However, I have nothing but respect and understanding for artists who's like the principle

that animates their life is making music to keep making music, whether or not it's going to hit the levels of their, you know, imperial phase peaks, which it almost never is. No, sure. And being okay with that and just continuing to explore and make interesting and cool. or whatever, weird or not, who cares? You know, like, I completely understand that impulse and absolutely respect it, you know? Look, I mean, whatever someone wants to do, do it.

It's a free country. It's a friend out of it. If you want to make 40, 40 for now, well, is it free? That's a good question. Free is doing a lot of how you live things. But I suppose it's not absurd that someone would want to make that many records. it's absurd to think that of course you should do it but it's absurd to sort of try and take in that much information

right if you were as a listener you mean as a fan right you know obviously if you for instance if you host a long-running successful and marvelous podcast about people's entire careers then you know you get used to that you get you know if it's like album 20 it's like great yeah you get used to it the way you get used to Stockholm syndrome yeah yeah exactly and you go you know what these are great. This is great.

14th album and this alternative rock band's career is actually, you know what, it's kind of hitting. But you know what? You like me have read an awful lot of rock memoirs. Yes.

And what is striking about almost all of them is that it's like they want to tell you they'll go nuts on like the first sort of two or three years and then without fail

it's like and then we went back into for album six. It becomes a bit of a yada yada for sure. Yeah, it's good. It's yada yada. even for them, right, it's become yada yada. And I think that it would, the thing about the port-said,

I suppose in a nutshell, right? The thing about the port-said story is they're never meant to be big. They got big. Right. They changed. Then they really changed. Then they went, that's enough. And there is a beauty in that.

Do we need 10 port-a-sad albums? No. Would it be nice to have another one of these? Because they feel like they're able to approach. Exactly. Was it sound like? Well, yeah, exactly. It would probably sound very, very different.

But it feels like each one is sort of age appropriate. And I suppose that's the thing that's, that's the sort of sweetness in the melancholy is it's like, imagine what would they sound like now? You know, where would they be now as people? And that's, maybe we'll never know. We'll probably, almost certainly never know. I think part of the like alchemical idea of these three people bringing each something to the table that like has a chemical reaction that creates. this incredible thing, is also temporal. So it's like that alchemy might not happen 20 years later.

They're different people, you know? Like, it's the intersection often of both the people and the timing. Sure. So, again, I don't, I'm not saying I don't think another port's album could be amazing. It probably, you know, absolutely could be. It's just, it's kind of nice. And also just for my mental health and my time management to have an album. It's nice that they've done three albums.

Every album band, you know? That's nice. Yeah, three and a live, great. It's so great. Yeah. Well, Rob, this has been a real joy and pleasure to spend this time with you discussing Portishead. It's been a real pleasure, a real genuine pleasure, Yassi, and I've been delighted to guest on your wonderful show. So thank you. Sincere, thank you.

You guys, listen to Rob's podcast. Please plug it now, so people don't forget. It's called States of Independence. It is about the history and legacy of the world's greatest independent record labels, and season one is on the Mighty Beggars Banquet. And so there's like Gary Newman's on it, the cult are in it. No big bill. Charlottons, go-betweens, Gillesabelle.

Yeah, good stuff. And Martin Mills, obviously, they're found. Give it a listen, you guys. It's available now. It's available on all listening platforms. listening places. Thank you, Rob. Thank you for listening and come back next week for a new episode of Bansplaine.

If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bansplaine. Our guest today was Rob Fitzpatrick. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Bex Donnelly and Jared Harris in London. Graphics are by John Richter. Executive producers for Bansplaine are Gina Delvac and me, Yasea Sondra. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Clavin and graciously recorded by Carlos Villagazza in Los Angeles, California.

Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennessey and especially Jeff Barrow. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bansplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. I've started getting a lot of people scratching content on TikTok just today. Which makes me think, wow, you really are listening. You really are listening to you. Even on airplane mode.

Oh, there's no way around it. They're going to get to. Suddenly, it's been a lot of wiki wiki going on.