today
9 a.m. Doris Niles Humboldt County Science Fair Humboldt State University
read >10 a.m. Annual Juggling Festival Humboldt State University
read >10:30 a.m. Green Jobs Fair College of the Redwoods Downtown Site
read >11 a.m. Baby Read and Grow Program Humboldt County Library
read >1 p.m. Apple Solutions for Small Business See Event Description
read >4 p.m. Young Parent Support Group College of the Redwoods Kinship Site
read >6 p.m. The Tumbleweeds (cowboy songs) Chapala Cafe
read >6 p.m. Bon Swing Libation
read >6 p.m. Annual Pisces Party See Event Description
read >6 p.m. Annual Pisces Party See Event Description
read >7 p.m. DJ Ray Boiler Room
read >7:30 p.m. Arianna String Quartet Calvary Lutheran Church
read >7:30 p.m. A Midsummer Night's Dream Arcata High School
read >8 p.m. Eureka Symphony Concert Arkley Center for the Performing Arts
read >8 p.m. Humboldt Folkdancers Arcata Presbyterian Church
read >8 p.m. On the Wings of a Dove Carlo Theater (Dell'Arte)
read >8 p.m. Antigone College of the Redwoods
read >8 p.m. So Hum Tales Mateel Community Center
read >8 p.m. Gentle Thunder Arcata Playhouse
read >8:30 p.m. The Last Minute Men (international) Cafe Mokka
read >9 p.m. Taxi (rock & roll) Bear River Casino
read >9 p.m. Vintage Soul (R&B) Cher-Ae-Heights Casino
read >9 p.m. Bump Foundation Pearl Lounge
read >9 p.m. The Brothers Comatose (folk) Six Rivers Brewery
read >9 p.m. The Malone (rock Red Fox Tavern
read >10 p.m. Music by DJ Sidelines
read >10 p.m. DJ Ninja Retro Dance Party Aunty Mo's Lounge
read >previous columns
May 1, 2008
The Feel Good Record of the Year
Album by No Use for a Name. Fat Wreck Chords. ...
read >April 24, 2008
Pure Abstractions
Spring dance concert April 17 at HSU's Van Duzer Theater ...
read >April 17, 2008
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
By Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Anti-/Mute Dig, Lazarus, ...
read >Photos
Third
By Joel Hartse
Album by Portishead.
Island Records
Third is an unnecessary album. From the beginning, all Portishead needed in the way of legacy was a pair of albums that felt like they'd dropped out of nowhere — somebody's attic, maybe, or rescued from the flooded basement of a bankrupt '70s soul label. Portishead built songs carefully out of just a few elements — drums (always blurring the distinction between sampled and live, sparse, spooky guitar, and the centerpiece of it all, Beth Gibbon's lilting, anguished voice.
Dummyand Portishead are simply elegant, grown-up albums that manage to be so without feeling elitist or pretentious. The mystery, ecstasy, and sensuality of the band was inscrutable — one doesn't even feel the pull toward dissecting the song's elements or speculating about the source of the samples. It's as if songs like "Glory Box" and "Cowboys," samples included, were always just meant to be — like the people who were sampled didn't realize the real meaning of their original tracks until they became a part of this otherly thing.
But man, all of that gets shattered when the band's founder, Geoff Barrow, starts a MySpace pages where he blogs about hating bands like Gorillaz, and doesn't want Portishead's music used in commercials, and frequently peppers his misspelled posts with the word "fuk" (sic) like a petulant 14-year-old. Portishead does not belong on the Internet, should not give interviews (thankfully, Gibbons doesn't), and ought to only exist as a cloud of existential mystery hovering near Bristol.
But Thirdis out, it's Portishead, and it's dark and scary and beautiful, so we might as well live with it. There are a few songs that retain those elements of '90s Portishead — "Hunter" recalls "Glory Box" with restrained elegance — but the most interesting bit is an unexpected one.
"Deep Water," not even two minutes long, is an absolute revelation. A plunka-plunka ditty that could easily have been a 1920s pop hit, with backup vocals that resonate with the warmth of a barbershop quartet on AM radio. That they manage to pull this off on an album full of what has come to be called "trip-hop," without making it feel the slightest bit out of place, proves that Portishead deal not so much in genre as in mood. The band says as much with a ukulele as they do with the relentless drum machine of "Machine Gun" or the evil foghorn synthsounds of "Threads."
It's also a rare glimmer of light from the self-hating that Gibbons perpetrates throughout "Third," as she sings, "No matter how far I drift, deep waters won't scare me tonight." It's just barely buoyant on an album that sounds like drowning, but "Deep Water" is a signpost suggesting that just maybe there's still hope.


















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