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| Groupes: Portishead | Discographie | Dummy | Critiques |
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1994
Dummy plays a like a romantic film noir, filled with reverb, sighing strings, dark erotic arrangements, and the doomed, sighing vocals of Beth Gibbons. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All-Music Guide
This dance-oriented U.K. duo has been hailed as one of the most ingenious newcomers in years. Part of the burgeoning Bristol blues scene, the act meshes deep, dubby basslines with way-out instrumentation (Hammond and Theremin), slow-shuffling hip-hop beats, and a vocalist who wavers between Billie Holiday's melancholic resignation and Nancy Sinatra's campy melodrama. Aptly titled 'Mysterions' kicks off this spy-themed CD, while majestic 'Sour Times,' which samples 'More Mission Impossible,' is pure James Bond. Portishead is a small town outside of Bristol and home to singer Beth Gibbons and musician Geoff Barrow, the shakermakers behind perhaps the year's most stunning debut album. The current single, Sour Times, is the best indicator, a gorgeously blue lament set to a loping hip hop beat with a shimmering, cinematic arrangement of dark guitar twang and jangling dulcimer. The result most closely echoes the drama of Unfinished Sympathy by fellow Bristolians Massive Attack. Strangers, Numb and It Could Be Sweet nail an atmosphere of romantic abandonment and urban alienation that reaches its apotheosis in the closing Glory Box, where a mournful guitar solo precedes Gibbons's panicky realisation: If this is the beginning of forever and ever ... The singer's frail, wounded-sparrow vocals and Barrow's mastery of jazz-sensitive soul/hip hop grooves and the almost forgotten art of scratching are an enthralling combination, and if Portishead tend to dwell within the same groove, it's easy to forgive them when they're on to such a good thing. Martin Aston pour Q
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