Portishead's lead singer beth Gibson grips the mic stand with both hands as if it is a lover's arm and the lover is about to to leave her forever. And she pours herself into the songs, with an intense melodic wail, as the rest of Portishead surround her with swathes of heavily layered and doctored sound known as trip hop, though Monday night, they genre swapped landing at blues, rock and dance from time to time
First a caveat: I have a bad cold and left after an hour of the 90 minute set (I have a tix for Bryan Ferry tonight and don't know if I'll make that at all). So I missed a third and I was stuck at the back. Hammerstein isn't Roseland so I could see OK, even if from a distance. And Portishead are much more about the music then production values.
Bristol's trip-hop Portishead were formed in 1991 from the same scene that brought us Massive Attack and Tricky. But Tricky's instincts took him to hip hop only sideways and Massive Attack were vaguely affiliated to reggae. Meanwhile Portishead are a quintessential middle class white group and revolve around a quasi-English folk sound anchored by Beth's deep voice.
On Monday, Portishead scratched on one song, played a dance pattern on another, a blues guitar lick on yet another. The sound was of a piece but there was so much more going on throughout and the big screens above the band gave an intimacy as simultaneously abrupt and emotional as Beth's voice.
Six musicians were on stage but the only two that we noticed is Beth and Geoff Barrow. Barrow, a good looking lad with a shock of blonde hair and a Cobain like intensity which mask a very English dryness, stays in the background but not the far background (he did the same with offshoot Beak ). He does everything from programming to sampling and two of the finest moments in the evening belonged to him: the scratching on "Over" and the picking bass notes on "Wandering Star".
The latter, with Beth kneeling on the floor and Geoff cross legged next to her, is one of the sets outstanding moments, only the songs quietness is interrupted by three girls standing next to me and they won't shut up. Neither will any one else in the further reaches of the Ballroom, and given as to how fast the show sold out, you have to wonder what the fuck they're doing there.
Actually, the set was consistently excellent and if I wasn't about to pass out I would have never left. "Wandering Star" began a four song cycle that may well have been the greatest moment in live music this year. It was followed by the hard fun shot snapped drums plus Tom Tom "Machine Gun". the scratching during the break of "Over" and then "Nylon Tech" where the final Head, Adrian Lutley, takes them all the way out of spacey dub land and into hard rock with a stunning blues guitar solo.
The last song before I leave, the one i've waited for all night, is 2009's "Chase The Tear". Written for Amnesty Internation (who own the rights in perpetuity throughout the Universe), this is really a hard rock song with a superb bass lick so catchy, so indelibly great, I foolishly start to dance (or at least nod my head in time), a terrible mistake which lead to my ultimate demise!
Never mind, the hour I saw was absolutely superb. A wonderful creation by one of our great rock bands. I mentioned earlier how a good show effects the way you listen to a band's recorded material, tonight made me love Portishead more.
Grade:A