A Review Of Something Old And Something New For You
(Not Gérard Depardieu)



A battle between the narrative and the poetic - the pre-meditated and the heuristic - the Subtleties of light jazz oratorio-style musical and scratchy, sample driven post-post-post Trip Hop. With Tell Me On A Sunday we have a collaboration between Don Black and LLW of the double crown - a story which starts without explanation and rides up and down the various highways of a woman's journey across America - a woman foregoing the low-life darkness of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriaty for the crystal-lined malls of air-conditioned, muzaked high life with various "creative types". Sounds horrible doesn't it? I bet you'll cry somewhere along the line. Somewhere in the years between this record coming out and now, the technology has swallowed the feeling that good old vinyl used to paste over everything - or at the very least allowed to shine through. And despite TMOAS only being available on MP3 (or CD if you have fifty quid to spare on eBay), the emotion really does come through, managing to avoid the mauling that mp3 hands out as the penalty for fitting 3000 CD's on something that you might throw away by accident.

This story has no absolute start - it drops our heroine in New York, already in anguish at some proto-yuppy having done the dirty on her. What is obviously clear is that whatever traumas happen to this woman, her girlfriends are bitches, nasty gossiping harpies with drink problems and accounts with the plastic surgeon. You wonder why she stays in the country when it is so obvious that the solution to all her problems lies back home with mum and possibly with Neville Braithwaite as well. Still -- nothing ventured - a relationship with a high roller - however much it is pre-destined to last about as long as a mayfly - is still an adventure compared to a life of boredom and the pub on Sunday back in Muswell Hill. And a flight home would end the beauty and crime that is this record.

We drop in to this world-as-a-stage - it is much like the strange set-based drama of One From The Heart - without any idea of why our nameless narrator has decided to leave Neville and camp out on fifth avenue with Joe. But immediately we find out that Joe is a git - a businessman at large - I cannot help feeling that the relationship might have been saved by judicious use of the higher-numbers on the hotel TV service - and that there are plenty of unfulfilled women itching to reveal how much of a git he actually is. So Joe goes the way of all Joes and we learn a little too much about the pseudo-intellectual that is Sheldon Bloom and of course the one thing about pseudo-intellectualism is that it rubs off. Not sure why but this part of the story is the most likable for me precisely because of the LA Story atmosphere. The outsider's analysis of the empty life of film people is both a beautiful and emotional song - a passionate reaction to the ever-sunny days and lives of the empty-heads of Sunset Boulevard. And as added beauty and comedy we have Elaine Stritch as Mr Stigwood's secretary - almost but not quite as iconic as Martin Amis' appearance in one of his own novels - or have I got the wrong Mr Stigwood? And of course this relationship fails - we need no reason - it is destiny.

And who next? We are not sure. And we do not need to know. About now we lose track of the men - it all becomes a blur of happy mania, shocked and violent discovery of infidelity, and the lament to herself as our demi-ingenue rants and raves about how it is all her fault. She just picks herself up and carries on - all the time writing to her mum in the happy mode of Sylvia Plath writing home. It ends in a blur of all three modes - like there is no real beginning there is no ending either. This commentator can only hope that the final misery is brought on by jet lag as she waits in some East Coast airport for her connection home. Did you cry?

And now we have Third by Portishead - a ten-years-after album that before relase hung on the cusp of the graph of catastrophe theory - it could be nothing other than a pointless re-hash of the past glories of Trip Hop or a triumphant parade down the lesser-travelled byways of alternative music. Portishead are one of the few bands to handle both life in the main-stream and the byways of such organs as Wire - indeed as has been mentioned in many-a-derisory review, they were the soundtrack to many a wibbling-classes dinner party - but let's not let that colour our opinion. Not having been to many such dinner parties, the associations of albums one and two are not brought down to tedious cliches.

There is no story here - I admit freely that the words of this record have not yet had time to seep in - and unlike TMOAS they have no chance to because they are incidental to the greater good of the music. The album opens with a sample of radio which immediately reminds me of Mr Kadali by Sing Sing, but any comparison stops there - we have a throbbing lo-fi intro which drops suddenly to the water-treading that allows Beth to moan over the top of the track. It is obvious that this is no Dummy and you will probably agree that this is a good thing. This track finishes as if the needle had been lifted off the vinyl. And now we pulse into seemingly random hits of deep and distant drums again waiting for Beth to sing.

There is no overall theme - though the voice is a constant - instantly obvious as Portishead and yet completely different from anything that goes before. Depressives should avoid - or maybe it would actually be therapy - isn't that the purpose of all music? The middle tracks (rip especially) sound dangerously, though not unhappily, like Goldfrapp to the extent that I was beginning to wonder whether Alison and Beth had ever been seen together. There are stand-out tracks - some with medals for the voice and some that win on looping strangeness that seeps in while you aren't looking.

It is obvious that there is no comparison between the two above records. Or is it? Like every human programmed to look for faces everywhere, we love it when we see connections that are not obvious and there are many here. Infinitesimal droplets of emotion sharing both musical and emotional scales are all around, artificial they may be simply because these two records are important - maybe constants in the ever-changing list of favourites that I am compelled to construct by my daughter. I realise that Third needs more listens to pick out the real nuggets but sometimes many listens leave you with simply an overwritten palimpsest of crayoned impressions. Both are great records and need no stars to reinforce how great they actually are.