Portishead's third album comes 11 years after the second and 14 years after the 1994 classic Dummy. Beth Gibbons sounds the same as ever, but the music is now much cruder and sounds dirtier - sometimes resembling the more psychedelic work of dEUS, and sometimes sounding a lot like 80s band the Klinik (electro new wave), strangely. While I loved the sound immediately, the music needed to grow on me, but it is doing just that; I've heard the album about 10 times now and am liking it more and more. 9/10

On May 8th I'll see Portishead live in Brussels, yay! I'll have seen 5 of my 10 all-time favourite bands live then (also Depeche Mode, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb and Tool).