Listen to Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s homemade cover of Portishead song ‘The Rip’
Throughout the 1990s, British music was treated to some truly innovative artists. Outside of the burgeoning Britpop craze, triphop embarked on a steady climb of its own through the decade. The genre, trailblazed by the Bristol collective Massive Attack in the late 1980s, was more tightly bound to the west country city with the emergence of Portishead, who released their debut album in 1994. Meanwhile, just 60 miles to the east, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of the Oxford band Radiohead had begun work on their breakthrough sophomore album, The Bends.
Portishead formed in 1991 after founders Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrow met in the unlikely surroundings of an Enterprise Allowance course in Bristol. Having discovered a mutual taste in music, the pair recorded an initial track together, ‘It Could Be Sweet’. Shortly thereafter, the early recording fell upon the ears of jazz enthusiast and producer Adrian Utley while they were jamming at Coach House Studios. The three musicians swiftly bonded over a mutual sonic goal, named themselves after Bristol’s neighbouring coastal town and set to work on recording their debut album, Dummy.
The groundbreaking album garnered attention for Gibbons’ transcendent, haunting vocals and the expertly produced hip-hop samples and baroque instrumentals. The album won the Mercury Prize in 1995 and kept a tight fanbase on their toes for three years before the eponymous follow-up.
Over their initial run in the ‘90s, Portishead released just two studio albums and to date have only released one further, 2008’s comeback album, Third. In that same period, Radiohead released a total of six albums, and despite their prolific output, they are remarkably yet to win a Mercury Prize from their five nominations over the years. Of course, Radiohead won’t be too disheartened by this stat, given their healthy and wholly deserved accolade stockpile.
Radiohead and Portishead began their careers as two very different groups, with the former offering a British brand of grunge-infused angst-rock, but the desolate atmosphere was often the same. Approaching the turn of the century, however, Radiohead’s sound began to take on a more electrified sound during the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions. This was a direct result of Yorke’s growing disillusionment with the worn-out confines of rock music.
Inspired by electro-innovators like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Autechre, Radiohead gave their fans a little shock following 1997’s OK Computer, but the influence of Portishead’s unique brand of trip-hop was also palpable.
The two bands have long been mutual admirers and have been known to collaborate on several occasions. Most recently, Radiohead’s drummer, Philip Selway, invited Utley to perform on his third solo album, Strange Dance, which was released in February 2023. Before that, in 2015, Portishead invited Thom Yorke to join them on stage at Latitude Festival to perform their 2008 hit ‘The Rip’.
The popular Third cut clearly strikes a chord with the Radiohead frontman. In 2009, Yorke joined Greenwood for this entrancing homemade cover of ‘The Rip’.
