131. Portishead, "Dummy"

 


Sorry about Friday, but I just didn't feel like it was right to do my dumb album review on one of the saddest, most profound days in American history, the day when 6 judges, 3 of whom were picked by a President who lost the popular vote twice, decided to take away the right of a woman to control her bodily autonomy.  Since then, I've been awed by the voices of women and men who are determined to fight instead of just bummed out and kind of lost feeling like me.

Which brings us to Dummy, Portishead's debut album, an album NME called "a sublime debut album.  But so very, very sad."  NME is not wrong.  This album is so suffused with melancholy and longing that it practically makes you want to weep.  It has probably made many people weep.

Although this wasn't by any means the first trip-hop album, or even the first big trip-hop album, I think it represented such a leap forward in the genre that they became intimately associated with it to the point that even they got sick of it.  I mean, everyone was using samples from old soundtrack albums over hip-hop drums, but the detail that absolutely fascinates me about this album is that the band recorded their own music onto vinyl which they then scuffed up by walking on the records and such.  They sampled their own music from an imagined past!  Tricky could never.

And it is haunting and magnetic music.  Take "Sour Times," which starts with a Lalo Schifrin sample and that head-bopping drum track and Beth Gibbons' lovely, aching vocals.  Do you think she's singing about how great her friends are or a beautiful spring day?  No she is not:

 Who am I, what and why?
'Cause all I have left is my memories of yesterday
Oh these sour times
'Cause nobody loves me
It's true
Not like you do

Drag, huh?  But still, what a beautiful song, that chorus will stick in your head forever.  I'm also a huge fan of "Wandering Star."

Please could you stay awhile to share my grief
For its such a lovely day
To have to always feel this way
And the time that I will suffer less
Is when I never have to wake
Wandering stars, for whom it is reserved
The blackness of darkness forever
Wandering stars, for whom it is reserved
The blackness of darkness forever

OK, OK, Beth, we get it.  I know it all sounds like a huge bummer and it is, but the sounds are so carefully polished and put in place that it's such a joy to listen to even as it drags you down into the pit of despair.

(Bonus points if you heard this at a dinner party in the 90's or in a Mission restaurant that doesn't exist any more.)

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Oh, for sure.

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