Vinyl Record
Portishead
Portishead on 2LP vinyl. A 1997 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
2LP ยท 1997
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 1997 2LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
Portishead is the Bristol group's 1997 second album, released three years after Dummy turned their name into shorthand for an entire mood while making that shorthand feel instantly inadequate. Rather than repeat the debut's noir-sample grammar, Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley built a darker, more self-contained record from original performances, studio manipulation and the scratched memory of film music. Cowboys opens with menace rather than seduction; All Mine turns brass and melodrama into a trapdoor; Over carries one of Gibbons' most exposed vocals; Only You, Half Day Closing and Undenied move through dub weight, spy-soundtrack unease and emotional paralysis. The album arrived in 1997, when trip-hop was already being packaged as lifestyle atmosphere, and it pushed back by sounding hostile, heavy and psychologically cornered. It is less immediately glamorous than Dummy, but more claustrophobic and more deliberate: the sound of a band refusing to become the wallpaper their influence had created.
Portishead matters because it made the group harder to reduce. The album deepened the Bristol sound after Dummy, replacing easy cool with dread, original construction and emotional pressure, and proving that the band's identity was stranger than the trip-hop label built around them.
For collectors, the self-titled Portishead album is the crucial second statement: the one that tests whether the debut's atmosphere could become a larger language. It sits between Dummy and Third as the dark interior room of the catalogue, tense and unmistakably 1997.
Dark trip-hop with heavy drums, turntable abrasion, spy-film strings, dub pressure, scorched guitar, smoky brass, claustrophobic production and Beth Gibbons' wounded, controlled vocal presence.
Recommended for: Portishead collectors moving beyond Dummy; Listeners drawn to darker 1990s Bristol electronic music; Fans of albums that turn cinematic sound into psychological pressure; Shelves focused on trip-hop records that resist background listening.
When was Portishead's self-titled album released? Portishead was released in 1997 as the group's second studio album. How does Portishead differ from Dummy? It is darker, heavier and more self-contained, relying more on original performances and harsher studio atmosphere than the debut's sample-led noir mood. Which tracks define Portishead? Cowboys, All Mine, Over, Only You, Half Day Closing and Undenied show the album's mix of dread, drama and controlled emotional collapse.