Essential Albums - Dummy

 

Artist/Band: Portishead

Genre: Trip-Hop, Electronic, Jazz, Minimalism 

Label: Polydor Associated Labels

Year: 1994

Portishead's debut is a popular album in a music fan's mind but I think it is one of the best albums ever conceived, and it should be recognized as such.

About

Portishead formed in 1991 in Bristol, England, and is comprised of three primary members, singer-songwriter Beth Gibbons, electronic wiz and producer Geoff Barrow, and the jazz expert and co-producer Adrian Utley. Given the respective backgrounds of the trio, one can see how their debut output Dummy is a fusion of multiple genres of jazz, electronic, and sample music, pioneering the sound of trip-hop and downtempo music. For a debut album, Dummy is incredible in its consistency, album flow and cohesion. Each song focuses more on the sonic quality rather than loading it up with extravagant instrumentation, and they end up being sparse and repetitive establishing a very minimalist feel. And the entire album gives a feel of very slowly being submerged into a sea of uneasy utopia, the beaming and very sweet voice of Beth Gibbons pairs very well with a dark tone and sparser but loud beats. Every placing of each note, each guitar passage, each beat is very calculated but still manages to retain the "in the moment" feel. I love this album, I will put this somewhere in my top 10 best albums of all time.

Music

Dummy is 11 tracks of pure perfection, the opening track Mysterons encapsulates the vibe that Portishead are shooting for in the first 15 seconds, with very spacey keys and disk scratch and amazing snare hits, and it is pierced by the vocals with lyrics referencing an old British superhero film, towards the end the track ever so subtly starts going off its perfect sound and it warps a little. Sour Times is the second single from the album and has a cool sample of this with this delayed bells or similar and a plucky bass, a great single, the vocal inflections on this track are like everything else subtle and I noticed only after many listens. Strangers is a great song with a nice juxtaposition with a bass-heavy part and almost skeletal vocal verse, as great is this song it is in an unfortunate place between powerhouses of songs surrounding it. The next songs It Could Be Sweet and Wandering Star represent the best one-two punch provided by a pair of songs ever. The former is a bittersweet song about love and its struggles and it is amazing, with its almost industrial-esque samples and a very simple bass loop, with an exemplary vocal performance which is mastered masterfully (heh.). The next song Wandering Star might be my favorite from the album, the bass with heavy reverb and delay with almost distorted cymbals is a perfect tone-setter, the first verse is a normal vocal delivery then the sample and one of the most soulful disk-scratch comes in with every so minimal guitar leads with chorus and the following verse. The track keeps building instrumentally and is such a delight to listen, and of course, the obnoxiously catchy hook and the sadness it portrays is really powerful. It's A Fire deviates from the norm with it starting from the chord progression with comes as a breath of fresh relief from the bleak atmosphere presented in the album so far sonically, however, it is still very bleak and almost beautiful in its lyrics. Numb is full of intricate percussion and sonic textures with very emotional lyrics dealing with isolation. Roads start with this simple phased out guitar strums and is an amazing song, and when the beat kicks in is just such a mesmerizing moment, but the track had another one for you when the strings and layered guitars come in, and the hook where Beth sings "How can it feel this wrong?" never fails me to bring to tears. Pedestal and Biscuit are amazing songs but nothing different, just solid songwriting and fit's the album perfectly. The ending track Glory Box was the most popular single from this album and one can see why, its backbone is a simple beat sample and a spectacular vocal performance with some very cool effects on her voice thrown in, then the guitar comes in and blows everyone's mind and then is followed by a very succinct yet amazing guitar solo, AWESOME. It is just like Portishead to throw a song switch-up in the last 30 seconds of the album and then the song has a nice simple fade-out ending, and there is only one thing you can do now, listen to the record again!

Final Thoughts

This is one of the best albums ever made period, a band to have achieved so much perfection in their debut album is rare. Portishead will go on to do some more experimental stuff with their following albums but none reach the melancholic heights that dummy does. It is a full album experience, but still, the songs to sample from this album are either Glory Box or Wandering Star. The production through is very immaculate and never falters making it very similar at first listen, but Dummy is the album of subtleties, the more you listen the more weird and strange fun Portishead had with this album. Nothing more to say, my excitement for this album is apparent so just LISTEN.