Pitchfork

It's been 10 years since the last Portishead record, 1998's live recording of a show at the New York Roseland Ballroom. In that time Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow, and Adrian Utley have variously and individually collapsed from exhaustion, founded record labels, made solo records, started families, bought a lot of old recording equipment, and gradually, painfully slowly, thought their way round to making a third record. Now they've reemerged and the world's press have descended on them: questioning their every motivation, demanding they account for their long absence and explain their strange new sound worlds. All things considered, they seem to be taking it remarkably well. Maybe it's because Third is a triumph, genuinely invigorated with reinvention and fresh purpose, but Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley are on rare form, talking with wonderful ebullience and enthusiasm, finishing each other's sentences, freewheeling through the dilemmas of Lara Croft, the life-changing impact of Public Enemy, the coolness of Michael Caine, and the mystery of the sonic unconscious.

Pitchfork: Do you think Portishead suffered, in a funny way, from making such a fully achieved debut record? Most bands don't really know what they're doing in a studio when they start out, and only gradually get better.

Adrian Utley: We definitely didn't know how to work in a studio. We were totally raw, [just] learning. We had studio experience but never professionally.

Geoff Barrow: And we were always trying to do new techniques. We're always interested in putting drums through amps-- things that people probably had done, we were just discovering our own way of doing things.

Pitchfork: It was odd how quickly such an unusual record became overfamiliar.

AU: It was a pretty odd album when it came out, and it got assimilated very quickly. Well, not that quickly.

GB: It was a year, really, before people who you wouldn't expect to dig it were digging it. And it was strange.

AU: And it became a language then, that kind of sound. But for us...I remember thinking when we'd done it, there was some pretty weird [stuff]. "Wandering Star"! That was an odd track when it first starts off-- you think "what the fuck is that?!" at the time. Now, it's...

GB: I still think it sounds weird now though!

Pitchfork: I read you grumbling on the Portishead blog about your music being used in ads for things like relaxation therapy. Was that part of your motivation on Third-- to clear your name of all the trip-hop clichés?

AU: Haha, I sold them that!

GB: I know you did! You still owe me that fiver! But yeah, that was a definite thing for us, that was the difficult thing. We really wanted to sound like ourselves but not sound like ourselves. It was always going to be difficult.

Once we had "We Carry On"-- that was a good moment. And we already had "Magic Doors", which was more related to things that we've done in the past.

AU: I always loved "Magic Doors". We came up with it one afternoon, and everything seemed to change, in the kind of miniscule way that we change. And we become slightly hopeful that there might be a crack that we could push our finger through and say, "Let's have a look in here".

GB: After the second album, all the doors were closed. It felt like we'd hit this Lara Croft moment where basically none of the keys work and every door is fucking locked! And you think, but there must be a key! I've got find this fucking key. And that's almost the reason that we stopped. It seemed like, fucking hell, where do we go?

AU: And we were absolutely thrashed as well from touring and going through the experience of the second record and doing the New York thing. It was just bang bang bang. All the creativity just drained...

GB: ...falling on our arse, knackered.

AU: And you don't want to do it then. You don't want to face up to that challenge.

GB: But carrying on my terrible Lara Croft metaphor, over the years it just seemed like there were cracks in the door, whether that came from hearing new music that you really liked or just like talking or whatever was in your life. And now it feels like it's all open.

Pitchfork: Was there much crate-digging involved, trying to get inspiration?

GB: Not crate digging in the traditional, hip-hop sense, but absolutely searching for inspiration in old music, new music, wherever it might be. My mate's got a record shop down near where I live, and I'd go in there and pick some stuff up. And there'd be a chord, and we'd bring it up. We had a couple of tunes like that.

Pitchfork: Is it an odd way to listen to music? Thinking "how can I use this?" all the time?

AU: I don't do that. We do when we're together. But I don't listen to music in that way. I couldn't do it. Referencing and grabbing stuff is difficult. If I listen to something too much I can't get away from it, I can't do anything. I don't want to steal it! Like Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack-- I don't want to listen to it because I'll just nick it because it's so fucking brilliant. It's better to feel the haze of it through listening to it once...and work things out, or be inspired and talk and move on. It's an initial spark.

GB: I'm like that with Madlib as well. I get so excited by it. That's why I got off the sampler with this record, because all the beats would just end up sounding like Madlib. The way he develops stuff just seems like a brilliant way forward.

Pitchfork: I think the first inkling that people had that were was something afoot with Portishead was the lineup for your ATP festival in Minehead last December: Drone metal, old electronica, Balkan folk...

AU: Did you think it was weird?! It doesn't seem weird to us at all!

GB It's what we listen to.

Pitchfork: Well, it makes perfect sense now I've heard the record.

AU: Does it?! That's what so cool about festivals like that. Well, that festival, 'cause there aren't any other festivals like that. You get to open up the lid on someone's head and see exactly what's going on in their world. And it might be surprising. And it almost always is, I think.

GB: Because I run a label in Bristol, we were signing stuff that was like it-- there's a band called Atavist...

AU: When I heard it-- I think you played me Sunn 0))) and Om. I've always been massively into Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca and Swans and all of those bands-- pure noise, which I think are the beginnings of all of that. Sunn 0))) and those bands, they're in the same world to me. And when I heard them I though fucking hell, this is amazing!

GB: So unfuckingcompromising.

AU: Totally-- musically and personally uncompromising about what they do. In the same way that Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth were...

GB: And Public Enemy.

GB: Seeing them, there was a switch that came on. I was really having problems creatively. And I think a switch came on for me. When I saw Om play, it was like when I first heard "Bring the Noise" or "Yo! Bum Rush the Show" or "My 98", you just think, "fuck"!

AU: I'm still trying to find somehing in the world-- even though I'm a huge fan of many things-- that has been so utterly life-changing as Public Enemy was. It was at that time, that sound, and I knew nothing about it-- it came right out of the side of my vision. I didn't even know it was coming. There's lots of things I absolutely love now that are massively inspirational, but that was a first-love moment.

GB: There was an awful lot of hip-hop before it. There was Melle Mel. The electro stuff...

AU: I used to hear all that stuff. And all equally important, but when it was put together with a really heavy message-- and it was rough as fuck, wasn't it? I used to listen to that little instrumental break-- funky drummer-- on "Amen Brother" with a little digital watch sound on it. Thinking how the hell do they do that? So brilliant!

GB: And there was British stuff around at the time, like Gunshot, noisy hip-hop stuff. I listened to "Battle Creek Brawl" the other day on YouTube-- it's been taken down now-- and it's just like fuck! This is what it's about. But that's been absorbed into this other world somehow. And that was making me really depressed about music.

Pitchfork: In the absence of much else, were you forced to make the record you wanted to hear?

GB: Yeah, otherwise you end up in the commercial world, don't you? The business world. People thinking record sales equals good. Our big success was "Glory Box". And we had a row with the record company because we didn't want to release it because it felt too commercial. Fine in a body of work, but not as a standalone track. We lost the argument really. But we bought houses! [laughs] It's great, but the other side of that, when you play live, I feel like a bit of a performing monkey sometimes.

Pitchfork: Would you rather those records had not crossed-over so far into the pop world?

AU: No, I think it's amazing. We've been incredibly lucky.

GB: We didn't think it would happen with Dummy. We were told it'd be great if it sold 50,000. Our record company would have been really pleased with that. They wanted to take things slowly and develop. Obviously they were really chuffed when it blew up. We can't say we were miserable about success.

AU: We have turned down a lot of things that would have given us more success.

GB: We manage ourselves and we have complete control. We're in the lucky position where we're consulted on everything and if we don't want to do something we don't have to do it.

Pitchfork: "Machine Gun" is certainly an uncompromising comeback single.

GB: When you come back you don't want to tickle people under the chin-- you know what I mean?

AU: That was actually a unanimous decision between all of us, that that should be the first thing that people hear.

Pitchfork: Was it odd playing "We Carry On" in front of the Silver Apples at ATP considering how much the song owes to them?

GB: Yeah, and came after us with an axe saying "that's my song!".

AU: We didn't recognize him, did we? He had an oscillator and was putting it together and we thought he's this old dude testing kit, like somebody's tech. But we met him and he was a lovely guy...

GB: It does feel a bit weird. It has inspired us, and you can hear that it has, but at the same time there is an element of bringing something new to that. It does sound like us as well.

AU: With inspiration-- you don't have to hear it in the music. It can be a reason to stay alive, and that can be an inspiration. If you hear something better about your own being, that's an inspiration to you. And that's what a lot of those bands were. A Hawk and a Hacksaw, I can't imagine you'd hear any influence in us...

Pitchfork: I dunno, I think in a funny way it's a kind of folk record. A post-apocalyptic folk record maybe? You can hear it in some of Beth's vocal melodies.

GB: It's really strange, cos she's not into folk, is she?

AU: She's not now, because she's puked it all up-- she's got it all out of her system. Beth's not into...It's strange to know what she's into really. [Beth and I] would very rarely have a conversation like [Geoff and I] have. It comes from another world really. So any influence of folk music would be weird. I can't explain it really...

GB: No, you're explaining it well! She doesn't come from the way musos talk.

AU: She won't use categories in that way. She understands them, but it's beyond that.

Pitchfork: Mark Stewart recently wrote something about the influence of the old video rental store, Twentieth Century Flicks, on the whole Bristol scene, the way soundtracks became so important.

GB: It was nice that Mark wrote nice things, but I think they were mostly wrong.

Pitchfork: But I remember on the first record you talking about what you loved about those old Italian noir soundtracks was the grain of the real orchestration. The new record seems to have more of the grain of early 80s synths and samplers. Stewart mentions the soundtracks of John Carpenter movies.

GB: I think you're right, we are into John Carpenter. It's Ade's gear really, those early synths.

AU: I'm obsessively looking for them. I've got one on my list at the moment which is exactly in that world.

But we've always been into that from early on. I don't think it's changed. Low-bit resolution. Some of the best keyboards we're using-- I've got loads of fantastic keyboards-- but almost all the stuff we use on the record is really shitty, out of tune.

There's a fantastic keyboard that we got for about 80 quid-- it's a piece of shit!

GB: I've always believed that there's a sonic unconscious that makes people feel safe? Like when you used to watch things on VHS there would be a wobble, the tape used to get jammed a bit. And there's an element of that in what we're trying to do. I think Dummy has that as a record. There were sounds that were weird and otherworldly-- it was most likely record crackle or surface noise that worked in that way. On this record it's VHS tape.

AU: It's a weird thing that that degraded signal-- whether visual or audio-- is interesting. That limited frequency is so much more interesting to your brain. If you take a Sting record that would have been made in some incredible studio with amazing guitar, beautifully recorded with old vintage gear. Well, we've got old vintage gear as well. You can make it sound like that. But it's just not interesting to hear at all. You've got to limit all that stuff.

Another aspect of that John Carpenter thing. He's a director primarily and a musician secondly, and there's a direct approach with him. He will not fuck about. He's like "I need a boooommmpphh noise...That'll do!" That does the job. And we're always trying to search for something that really succinctly does the job-- not flowering out some kind of sound where you want to show off your synthesiser. It's about this sound is doing what we want it to do.

GB: Absolutely! You can get out your ProTools rig and your soft synths and make something sound like its inside a car or a tin can...

AU: ...and that's very good, but what about the pure emotion that you're trying to get into your music?

Pitchfork: The record reminded me, in its mood, of the film Children of Men-- something futuristic but primitive, a kind of washed-out bleakness.

GB: I really enjoyed Children of Men-- apart from that silly battle at the end.

Pitchfork: I'm not sure it's a great film, but it's like Blade Runner-- something about the mood and the feel of it is very suggestive.

AU: Oh I think Blade Runner is a great film!

GB: I don't like it that much. [But] I think Children of Men is a really good comparison. The Michael Caine character-- he's such a brilliant character.

AU: He's us, isn't he? He's what you hope you'd be in that situation!

GB: He's driving a Citroen and listening to Roots Manuva. The thing about that film-- you recognize everything around you, but it's just 20 years on. It's frightening.

Pitchfork: I was watching the new Jon Savage Joy Division documentary the other day and there's this moment where they interview the band and say, "With all the lyrics he was writing and singing, did you ever worry about Ian? "And of course they hadn't paid any attention! Third is sometimes incredibly bleak, lyrically. Did you ever feel the need to check if Beth was all right?

AU: Ha! It's very different. We see her all the time. Joy Division were kids, weren't they? They were farting on each other and pissing around. There was a whole different world there. She's a grown woman. She knows what she's doing.

Pitchfork: What's your ambition for Third? Will you be happy if it gets great reviews but sells a fraction of the earlier records?

GB: We're just happy we've done it. There is a real sense of "Oh wicked, it's done!" That's starting to fade now, because it's been a while now.

AU: I'd like it to sell well, and be a record that people like. You need to be able to live and do other music without utterly compromising everything you do.

GB: We all know it's a difficult time for record sales, but we're pleased with the record. If people want to come and see us, that's great.

Pitchfork: Some people say you've gone out of your way to make a record that couldn't be possibly be played at a dinner party. Unless you had Scott Walker and Diamanda Galas round for tea.

GB: [Laughs] It definitely doesn't have the pop element [of] Dummy, but there's a lot of people out there that want interesting music. And if we can be one of those bands that they can rely on to deliver that then that's fantastic.