Hello Portishead, welcome back, not that anyone missed you.
Don’t take that the wrong way. The English trip-hop pioneers are absolutely beloved, and as they embark on its first North American tour in 13 years, there is certainly rejoicing to be had. It’s just that with a discography of three albums from a band born barely post-Thatcher, one does get used to not having the trio from Bristol around.
“We do what we want to do,” says Geoff Barrow, Portishead’s co-producer, co-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. “And if we’re not ready to put out a record, we don’t do it.” Barrow, pleasant on the phone, spoke in advance of a short tour that brings the band to Montreal on Friday, Toronto on Sunday and Vancouver later in the month.
Portishead has been doing what they do (and not doing it too) since the early nineties. The band’s debut Dummy from 1994 was a genre-definer: Trip-hop, which is a narcotic, dimly lit blend of hip-hop beats, down-tempo dub reggae and oddly skewed samples. A self-titled follow-up came in 1997, but it wasn’t until 2008 that a third album was released. It was called, quite soberly, Third, a record made by the equilateral triangle of Barrow, vocalist Beth Gibbons and guitarist Adrian Utley.
“None of us particularly wanted to do another album during that time,” says Barrow, who keeps busy with soundtrack work and his side-project Beak. “We didn’t make a record for 10 years, but it wasn’t because we were doing nothing, it was because we were doing loads of other stuff.” As for taking this long to tour after the release, Barrow cites domestic responsibilities. “We all have little kids. Three years goes by in the blink of an eye.”
Time flies. Irish superstars U2 are the subject of Davis Guggenheim's new documentary From the Sky Down. In the film, the band describes itself as a clan – a clan that attacks musically against the sounds and trends that came before. Inevitably, after a time, a band gets further and further away from its initial war. It begins to fight not against a common-enemy past, but its own present.
“It’s a different story for us,” Barrow says. “It’s the same fight against the world.”
Specifically, Portishead fights against music and any art form that is “odious and pointless,” to use Barrow’s adjectives. “We’re trying to be visceral and express feelings about what’s going on around us.” To that end, last week the band curated the All Tomorrow’s Parties’ I’ll Be Your Mirror festival in New Jersey’s Asbury Park, where they shared an eclectic bill with Montreal-based avant-garde saxophonist Colin Stetson and others. “There’s a little bit of a war going on,” Barrow continues, “and you want to make something heavy, so you can stand by it.”
Portishead’s best attack is a good defence; together, there’s a security zone at work. “The three of us make music together that we could never make with other people,” Barrow says. “It’s everything. It’s a whole world that we enter, and I feel very comfortable there.”
It appears that everyone’s feeling cozy, within the Portishead shelter and outside it too. This summer’s European tour went well – “it’s been three years since we toured,” Barrow says, “it was amazing” – and fans are accommodating when it comes to Portishead’s hiatuses. “They don’t put any pressure on us,” Barrow says. “I guess we sort of have a track record now, after all of these years.”
Is it possible that the fans’ generosity has less to do with getting used to their band’s quirky calendar and more with a simple respect for what Portishead does? “It’s difficult for me to comment on that,” Barrow says. “I’m just glad that they’re there. We sell records and we sell out our shows. What else could you ask for?”
Portishead plays Montreal’s Jacques Cartier Pier, Oct. 7; Toronto’s Sound Academy, Oct. 9; and Vancouver’s PNE Forum, Oct. 24
Rock-Us Interruptus
As the Portishead embarks on its first North American tour in 13 years, other bands are in various states of repair. Here’s the lowdown on their limbo:
Jane’s Addiction On Oct. 18, the Perry Farrell-led alt-rockers release The Great Escape Artist, their first album since 2003 and second in more than two decades.
Blink-182 The blink-and-you’ll-miss-them pop-punksters just released Neighborhoods, their first album in eight years.
Bush Nickelback precursors last month released The Sea of Memories, its first studio album in a decade.
R.E.M. It’s the end of the jangly alt-rock world as we know it, and they feel fine. After 31 years, the Georgians called it quits late last month.
The Beach Boys Surf’s up? Brian Wilson has denied recent reports that he’d rejoin the sandy singers for a 2012 reunion tour, though he does allow that a fat cheque may change his mind. The Smile Sessions, a reworking of the lost Smile album from the sixties, comes out next month.
Genesis On Oct. 11, the former Genesis leader Peter Gabriel releases New Blood, an orchestra-backed album of his old hits rerecorded. Asked about a Genesis reunion involving a tour of their 1974 rock opera The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Gabriel tells Rolling Stone, “I won’t say never ever, but I think it would be in the outside department of the betting shop.”
Broken Social Scene This band is broken, for now. The Toronto indie-rock icons recently announced an “indefinite hiatus,” their second one of those.
The Bangles The all-female Walk Like an Egyptian troupe, which disbanded in 1989 and regrouped 10 years later, just released Sweetheart of the Sun, its first album since 2003. Eight years? It’s not as if they were erecting ancient pyramids.
