Customer Reviews
end of the evening sheer pleasure. - By: mia farrow, 21 Apr 2008 
put this on after you have got rid of alll the losers or u have made it home from the pub.
it oooooozes class.
Totally depressive, worthless noise. - By: Dino, 03 Dec 2007 
I bought this recently & will never play it again. totallly unmusical & the lead singers vocals are well over rated. i can think of many far better singers. nothing on this album is original.
i cant see how this album became so well rated on amazon.
Alien Heart - By: John Tree, 22 Sep 2006 This band came from the same Bristol incubator as Massive Attack & Tricky, & there is the same dreamy Trip-Hoppy character here. Where they part company is the cold steely atmosphere Portishead muster.
Beth Gibbons voice is the thing that defines the sound. Simultaneously bruised, almost wretched yet defiantly independent, her hip delivery, & almost jazz tinged voice brings out complex emotions.This debut album is a remakably strong collection of tunes with few weak links.
The music is creatively quirky, utilising Hip Hop, Jazz, atmospheric pads, angular beats & disjointed guitar. This is alien, but not alienating stuff, & it still sounds real cool & cutting edge now, withstanding endless repeat listens.. A remarkable achievement.
A genre defining classic - By: David William Johnson, 15 Mar 2006 This beautifully haunting record is one of those indispensables that any serious music fan has in their collection. I remember being completely blown away by the originality the first time I heard it. The punchy, nuerotic beats & the cold distant voice of Beth Gibbons. I guess if you could refer to trip-hop as a genre, this has to be it´s signature album.
"Mysterons," sounds like a martian landing, Gibbon´s distinctive voice unfurls the track with a steely brittleness. This music sounds purposefully distant & edgy. I like the curling beat on the second track,"Sour times." My personal favourite has to be the intro to the pulsating beat on,"strangers."
"It´s a fire," is the only track that sounds slightly out of place. It is the only track on the album that sounds like something you may have heard before.
The ranging,"Roads," is another extremely inventive track that preludes the classic,"glory box." Gibbons sounds like a battered, wounded woman on this song. Her lyrical approach is totallly unique.
What more can I say about this? It´s engaging, strangely distant but at the same time thoroughly seductive. A must buy.
Gob-smackingly good - By: ChezzyD, 24 Feb 2006 I don't know much about Portishead but I fell in love with their style when I first head 'Glory Box' what must now be many years ago (gulp). It was the combination of achingly sexy vocals, the slow throbbing guitars & classical style instrumentation plus some of the most powerful lyrics I've ever heard such as 'give me a reason to love you, give me a reason to be a woman'. Pure musical viagra... I was itching to buy the album & I was not disappointed, in fact I was astounded... 'Glory Box' was just a sublime introduction to this sound. 'Mysterons' has a genuinely other-worldly vibe - & though it has been stolen to introduce many a science fiction season on Sky it still has the ability to tug at you when those spare vocals take hold. On top of that is the incredible 'Sour Times'. I don't know how else to describe the shimmering bell sounds that introduce it but the song itself starts off like a slightly odd Bond Theme. Then those vocals again. Plaintive & erotic this song is just about as sexuallly charged as it gets. The other tracks alll have merits: 'Strangers' is slightly heavier with its trip-hop beat & sparse jazz-like quality. 'It's A Fire' a surprise again with the inclusion of some great gospel-style keyboards, 'Numb' has a great line 'Cos I'm still feeling lonely, feeling so unholy'. The others are a little 'samey' in style but to be honest you feel so drugged up by the album by then that it doesn't detract at alll. This album has a style reminiscent of later bands like Goldfrapp, Zero 7 & Morcheeba who have taken this smokey torch singer music & perhaps taken it to the next level but this is the original & best. It deserves 5 stars just for being so damned sexy...
