Portishead – ‘Dummy’
Portishead‘s debut album, Dummy, is an immersive experience inviting listeners into a world of loneliness, discontent and paranoia. The landscape painted by vocalist Beth Gibbons is murky, often hopeless, but utterly enticing. Her smoky, mesmerising voice, yearning for something greater, encourages the listener to indulge in this seductive misery defined by hazy beats, samples of retro soundtracks, and warm vinyl crackling.
On Dummy, Portishead work with contradictions and contrasts, blending classic instruments such as the theremin, ondes martenot, and flute with hip-hop-inspired beats, sampling, and vinyl scratching. The result is one of the most sonically impressive and innovative albums of the 1990s. From the downbeat, mellow cuts, which make for perfect late-night listening to cinematic, melodrama-infused moments, Dummy is a masterclass in atmospherics.
The record opens with ‘Mysterons’, a sci-fi-inspired number which immediately situates us in an otherwordly location. The drums bounce with an infectious rhythm, contrasting the silkiness of Gibbons’ refrains. Quickly followed by ‘Sour Times’, Gibbons pierces through a sample of Lalo Schifrin’s spy theme ‘The Danube Incident’, with a cry of “‘Cause nobody loves me, it’s true/ Not like you do”. The song is charged with drama, aided by Adrian Utley’s cinematic guitar, yet it never veers into exaggerated territory. Instead, it remains sultry, leading with mystery and intrigue.
On ‘Strangers’, the band prove their unique sampling abilities by looping a short sound from Eddie Harris’ ‘Wait Please’ to become the song’s driving force. Weather Report’s ‘Elegant People’ is also blended into the mix, resulting in a spellbinding concoction that moves between soft and hard, smooth lines intersecting with crunching beats, like an axe slicing through and striking the soundscape into submission.
Yet, Dummy boasts versatility in all its cohesiveness, with the band taking a more relaxed approach on ‘It Could Be Sweet’. It’s one of the album’s softer moments, and Gibbon’s voice feels incredibly intimate and honest as she opens up to the vulnerabilities of love. “I don’t want to hurt you/ For no reason have I but fear,” she sings, later adding, “I’m sorry to remind/ But I’m scared of what we’re creating/ This life ain’t fair”. She breathes a short sigh, emphasising her hesitation and despair before allowing the soft keys to wash over her.
There’s defiance in the pulsating beats of ‘Wandering Star’, which are interrupted by samples of War’s ‘Magic Mountain’, with Geoff Barrow creating a disjointed sound by continuously scratching the record. He breaks up the song’s steady flow, mirroring Gibbons’ declarations of “The blackness, the darkness, forever”. There’s never a stagnant moment on Dummy, with the band continuously propelling the record forward with complex layers of contradicting sounds which seem to clash in perfect harmony.
There are so many highlights to be found on the record, but it would be blasphemous not to mention ‘Roads’, arguably the album’s centrepiece. It’s a devastating moment, led by melancholic strings and Gibbons’ tenderly desperate vocals, begging the question, “How can it feel this wrong?” It’s hard to argue that ‘Roads’, which emphasises life’s loneliness, isn’t the record’s most heartbreaking song.
Moving towards the record’s end, the penultimate track, ‘Biscuit’, takes something slightly sweet and turns it utterly sour. A sample of the upbeat ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’ by Johnnie Ray is slowed down into something sinister and unapologetically cynical. The darkness permeating through the track conjures images of desolate city streets and distant sirens, with uncertainty lingering around every corner. Gibbons is “lost”, “exposed”, and “scared” as she reckons with the bruises of past love.
Dummy finishes with ‘Glory Box’, which samples Isaac Hayes’ track ‘Ike’s Rap II’. Its sensual rhythms, paired with Gibbons’ cries of “give me a reason to love you” arguably make it one of the sexiest-sounding songs ever made. Utley’s coarse guitars directly oppose the sultry string samples, yet the two work together flawlessly. ‘Glory Box’ is an exquisite close to the album, with Gibbons using her entrancing voice as a vessel to consider the intersection between love and womanhood.
Dummy is an essential record; its haunting melodies, glitching beats, and cinematic samples create a sound that is entirely idiosyncratic, cementing Portishead as masters of the trip-hop genre. The hypnotic album remains the band’s greatest achievement, and several decades later, it still manages to sound incredibly ahead of its time.
