Portishead: Portishead (2LP) [LONDON]

Why you'll love it

This Go! Beat reissue spreads the album over a 2LP set on 180g vinyl, which suits a record this deep in the low end. It reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 21 on the Billboard 200, went platinum in the UK and gold in Canada.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in Canada

About the album

After Dummy, Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and Adrian Utley had a problem most bands would love: everyone wanted to copy them. Their answer was to stop borrowing from other people's records altogether. Over 1996 and 1997, at State of Art in Bristol, Ridge Farm and Moles in Bath, they wrote and played their own pieces and then treated those as the raw material, so the scratches and crackle are theirs.

The result is darker and more dramatic. "Cowboys" opens with a menacing lurch, "All Mine" is a brassy, torch-song blast (its video gave the album its cover), "Over" is all scratched guitar and dread, and "Only You" slinks along on the one set of outside samples on the record. Gibbons is extraordinary throughout, from the spare "Humming" to the closing "Western Eyes."

Spin ranked it sixth of 1997. The liner notes credit "Western Eyes" with sampling Hookers & Gin by the Sean Atkins Experience, a song that doesn't exist; the band made it up, which is about as Bristol as a joke gets.

Also at Kops: more Portishead on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Go! Beat (cat# 5715099), a reissue of the 1997 album.