|
Portishead's Roseland NYC Live
Two years in the making, this album documents the band's club performances, pulling together material from shows in the U.S. and Europe. The tracks, including Portishead staples like "Sour Times" and "Glory Box," weld strings and horns--and even live drums--onto the group's gloomy turntables'n'samples sound. But Roseland NYC Live reveals that the band's live performances don't expand much on their albums--there's little sense of any chemistry between Portishead and its audience. Sure, it's a great run-through of everything Portishead does--tortured vocals, eerie strings, swirling guitars, and a hypnotic pulse--but it's nothing terribly new. If you own the 1994 debut Dummy or the self-titled 1997 follow-up, there's no need to check into the Roseland suite. As interesting as it is to hear the live orchestral accompaniment, it just sounds like the band has something to prove here. Maybe they're trying to save trip-hop, the poorly titled genre that the band defined (along with Tricky) less than five years ago. The explosive critical and popular acclaim Portishead found in Britain in 1994 and 1995 is all but gone. It's a shame, since the group's writing skills haven't diminished a bit, even as trip-hop has disappeared faster than you can say "grunge." Still, Portishead's live sound exudes a creepy charm that captures those dark nights of the soul better than anyone else. What Roseland lacks as a live album it makes up for in accessibility: Portishead's live show still bleeds the same strangely appealing self-loathing that made Dummy a masterpiece of hipster ultra-cool. (Go! Beat/London) --Jason Heller | |||||||||||||||||
