“Dummy” by Portishead

90s Week continues with an out-of-body trip-hop experience.

Programming note: It’s 90s week! I'm spotlighting some of my favorite records released between 1990 and 1999. Like previous decade-themed newsletter posts, I've selected albums that cover multiple genres and deliberately avoided the well-worn titles that top all "best of" lists for this decade. In other words, no OK Computer, Nevermind, and so on.

Hope you enjoy it! 

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Hello! 😊👋

Welcome to a new edition of the Daily Music Picks newsletter!

Today’s 90s music pick is nothing short of transcendent, a trip-hop album that becomes an out-of-body experience.

Genre: Electronic, Trip-Hop

Label: Go! Beat

Release Date: August 22, 1994

Vibe: 😵‍💫

No other record I’ve ever listened to lulls you into a false sense of security like Portishead’s Dummy does. Often lumped in with other downtempo trip-hop records from the likes of Massive Attack and Tricky, this album is a far cry from that strain of calculated but well-made lounge music—the kind that would just as soon provide the backdrop for a dinner party or an early-morning fit of passion. The electronic and hip-hop influences on Dummy’s surface mask a quiet despair at the heart of each track, conveyed with heart-wrenching vulnerability by Beth Gibbons, a singer who believes “music is a spiritual thing, and it should be treated that way.” Despite the prevailing pessimism that descends on every song like a thick fog, you can hear that sensibility at work. If spirituality is primarily concerned with the human soul, as opposed to the materialism that drives performative interpersonal and cultural deception, Gibbons, alongside core members Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, strikes the rarest of hard-earned emotional chords with the listener.

One of the record’s most powerful moments occurs early on with “Sour Times,” a winding, cinematic cut built around jangly, 60s-style guitar work and a Lalo Schifrin jazz sample. Gibbons’ voice bubbles up to the surface of the soundstage in a way that makes you want to lean in and catch every soft-spoken word detailing a partner’s infidelity and subsequent lies (”Covered by the blind belief/That fantasies of sinful screens/Bear the facts, assume the dye/End the vows, no need to lie, enjoy”). On “Wandering Star,” which is a brooding synth chord away from being a DJ Premier beat, she invites you into her world with words of caution: “Please, could you stay awhile to share my grief/For it's such a lovely dayTo have to always feel this way.” Though “It’s a Fire” comes close to topping it, Portishead saves the most arresting (and best-known) moment for last with “Glory Box.” Turning an Isaac Hayes sample into an eerily seductive loop, it sees Gibbons go from singing in a washed-out whisper, as if the vocals were recorded through a telephone line, to delivering a steely ultimatum (”Give me a reason to love you/Give me a reason to be a woman”).

Front to back, this is a record worthy of such an iconic performance, one that ranks up there with the likes of Billie Holiday and Joni Mitchell.

👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈