I'm sitting on a couch, next to a girl I desperately want to be my girlfriend. It's complicated. But we've just had dinner, she puts on a CD, and despite any googly-eyed enthrallment, my focus shifts, deeply and suddenly.

- Who's this?
- Portishead… You don't know Portishead?

It's 1995—and my first encounter with Dummy.

...

Some albums alter the quality of light in a room, distort the ambient spectrum. I find that fascinating, and Portishead did it effortlessly. Dummy drops you smack dab in the middle of an empty Lynchian lounge at 2 AM. Just you and a troubled torch songstress at the edge of tears, ready to pounce and possibly scratch you bloody. Their second (eponymous) album expands on this mood, with Barryesque arrangements, and a touch of dirt and sand, as aliens hover, low in the winter sky. And Third, released a decade later, is bottled menace: the lounge is long gone, the songstress is in exile, inhabiting caves and surviving on NASA rations and lizard flesh. We're in the borderlands, or a padded room, or a space station—all are distinct possibilities.

It's hard for me to think of a more perfect, finite studio trilogy. Those albums almost read like a manifesto.

...

At the height of the trip-hop era, as they were riding the success of Dummy, the band recorded a live performance at NYC's now defunct Roseland Ballroom. I'm often left cold by live albums, especially from acts whose albums are studio masterpieces, but this one stands out for me. First, it's a brilliant interpretation of the music: the band is accompanied by an orchestra, but the sound never devolves into kitsch. None of it feels overdone or weepy. The strings bring depth, without syrup. The result is stirring, an elevation that never breaks the spell of the original productions.

But the concert also offers an early glimpse into what will become Portishead's second studio offering, with unreleased songs being played to an audience for the very first time. And you can hear it: the numbers from Dummy show a solidity that's still missing from the newer material. You can tell it hasn't yet fed on the energy of the stage, the pulse of an audience, that it lacks the assurance that comes from playing a set over and over. But I love that fragility.

Roseland, NYC Live came out in 1998. I mention it because it's been remastered to mark the album's 25th anniversary, and this new version was released just last week as Roseland, NYC Live 25 (with two bonus songs from the same gig). What a body of work.

On to the links…