Review Summary: A rhythmic, sensual masterpiece
Portishead's miraculous debut, Dummy, is soul music in the truest sense of the word. It is a journey into the heart of darkness which leaves you emotionally exhausted and bewildered, but ultimately intoxicated. Beth Gibbons' voice is white light refracted through a shattered psyche: at times pure, resonant and beautiful, at others desperate, hysterical and bordering on the deranged. With tight, fresh hip-hop beats and a subtle jazz flavor, most of Dummy is danceable, although the band does have a knack for creating an especially eerie mood with moaning organs and swelling strings. But when Gibbons enters the scene, her clear delicate vibrato casts a shadow of isolation and absolute melancholy over the whole album.
The music is often suffocating, the power of the bass seeping into the marrow of your bones, while the beats attempt to destroy your eardrums: the sound of sanity disintegrating. The production is flawless in both its listenability and its command of the album's mood. The orchestral feel of the strings and basslines makes it a densely layered listen and leaves you exploring each track many times over. That's perhaps what I love the most about this album. The beautiful vocals and rich production leaves you wanting to revisit each track over and over again. Each time leaving you with a new or different impression and/or understanding of the songs.
The emotional range on this disc is significant. The album kicks off with a descent into a maelstrom called "Mysterons". Thanks to an infectious snare drum, a science fiction movie soundtrack therein warbles in and out of the crevices. Adrian plays a guitar riff rent from the grooves of Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow, and in same fashion Beth dissolves Grace Slick to a plaintive moan on greed and lust and punishment. "Mysterons" steals into your consciousness like an electronic dream, but it is "Sour Times" that really kicks you awake. full-on John Barryesque orchestration attacks your senses, providing Beth with a backdrop to enchant you with her siren's song; "Nobody loves me, it's true - not like you do".
The album descends into the depths for much of the middle period. "Wandering Star" and "Numb" darkly funereal shards of fear and despair. Then there is "Roads", the album's masterpiece. Roads just may be the most perfect composition and recording by Portishead in their career. A soft and beautiful Rhodes piano protest ballad, hauntingly plaintive and pleading. when Adrian's echoing wah-guitar accompanying his string arrangement compliments Beth, you WILL get goosebumps. As Beth croons "Can't anybody see, we've got a war to fight" the violins slowly build into an unbearably beautiful torchsong which tries to steal your heart, and very nearly succeeds.
"Pedestal" and "Biscuit" are the comedown, the 3 AM stoned lullabies. "Biscuit" is entirely built around Johnny Ray's weeping "I'll Never Fall In Love Again", the instrumental bridges and his vocal refrain slowed down into the netherworld. Beth (as in most of her songs) never really divulges the meaning of the title "biscuit" but you can sense it is a bite of something she wish he hadn't eaten. It haunts her and enslaves her now, "Fully fed yet I still hunger". The Johnny Ray samples are rendered into a frightening spectre, Geoff spins him back and forth like a newly discovered musical instrument and the last finish fade out will stick with you like an unnatural glue.
Then, just as you're drifting off to another world, "Glorybox" glides into focus. Glory Box rebukes both genders with old fashioned metaphors and modern talismans. Ultimately this is the proper ending for Dummy, the tales are spun and by now you should be ensnared in the web. Beth in full Eartha Kitt mode, imploring someone "Give me a reason to love you, give me a reason to be a woman". A fantastically drunken guitar solo then ushers in a change of pace, a crash of drums and a promise: "This is the beginning of forever and ever..." As Isaac Hayes' strings fade into the dawn and if you've been paying attention, I defy you not to feel a little fragile.
What Portishead established with Dummy was the recognition of the diverse musical roots of the trip-hop movement, filtered through an intensely modernistic lens. Out in 1994, it sounds like it was released yesterday. You'll be in a new multi-layered, multi-colored world when you put this disc in. Out of this universe.
