Recording opportunities to talk about Portishead are so rare (4 albums in 30 years!) that we couldn't miss the one offered by this unexpected reissue. An exit announced by the appetizer offered last November 2nd, when, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of “Roseland NYC Live”, on the social profiles of the English band Adrian Utley he announced that a new remastered and expanded version of the historic album was available in streaming live in 1998. After having savored the magic of that concert in streaming, it is now also possible to enjoy it in a physical version, through this new “Anniversary edition”, available in double LP with red vinyl Ltd Edition and digipack CD. The single “Live 1998 Sour Times/ Roads” on 10″ vinyl will be available from May 31st exclusively on the Universal website.
Remastered and expanded, the new version of the live album now includes “Undenied” and “Numb” (in a splendid version full of twirls of keyboards and wah-wah), which originally appeared only in the concert film video, and the performance complete version of “Western Eyes”, which appeared in part in the film's closing credits. “Sour Times” and “Roads” are also now present in the original Roseland versions, while in the 1998 album recordings taken from other concerts were used (respectively, the live at the Warfield in San Francisco on 1 April 1998 and the performance at the Quart Festival in Kristiansand on 3 July 1998). “I have a vivid memory of this show where we played our second album before its release – explains Utley, who supervised the project – It was the first time that the public heard the new songs, and the show was organized precisely to launch the record that would later take us on a world tour. Great care was taken in the orchestrations and direction.”
Recorded in 1997 with a 28-piece orchestra inside the legendary Roseland Ballroom in New York, a small and evocative venue for concerts that sadly no longer exist, the album captured Portishead at the peak of their form and fame, still fresh from the glory of the triumph of “Dummy”, the definitive cornerstone of trip-hop, and ready to immerse themselves in the darkest but no less evocative sound textures than its successor (“Portishead”, 1997). And it is precisely the masterpiece of the latter, “Humming”, that opens the curtain: buzz, the musicians tuning the strings and then that chilling hiss of the theremin that bursts into the room, before the heartbroken voice of Beth Gibbons intoned his ghostly litany on an obsessive carpet of beat And scratch. Anyone who has attended at least one Portishead concert (the undersigned was lucky enough to follow the live performance in Rome in 2012) knows what incredible magnetic charge a performance by Gibbons, but those at Roseland really seem to possess an unrepeatable magic: eyes perpetually closed, cigarette in hand, curled up on herself, as if she couldn't support the weight of the impact with the stage, the chanteuse English surpasses itself with a series of performances of extraordinary drama and vocal power, worthy of its jazz and blues heroines, sometimes ending up straying directly into that field (listen, for example, to “Western Eyes”).
The band's ability to maintain the cinematic energy of these black and white (or rather, noir) trip-hop short films also remains exceptional even in the orchestral version, while accentuating the acoustic dimension and the airy breath of strings and winds compared to the studio originals (exceptional for example the ending from spy movie of “Strangers”). But even in this more sober and intimate setting the sonic power of classics like “Roads”, “Glory Box” or “Cowboys” remains intact, confirming how all the nonsense of the time about the alleged artificiality of studios of trip-hop deserve the end that history has reserved for them. The remastered versions of the songs also remove some of the original dynamic compression, leaving even more breathing space for the sounds, also enhanced by the possibility of listening in high resolution.
The only flaw: actually the first version of “Sour Times” published in 1998 was preferable, with its red-hot revisitation in a rock key – between lacerating vocalizations and a guitar tail in feedback – of the single that launched Portishead onto the world stage in 1994. The Roseland version, however, is more canonical, almost muted even compared to the original “Dummy”. But it is a venial sin that can be forgiven in the name of the greater homogeneity sought in this second version of the album, which, as we said, contains only the performances taken from the New York live show.
There reissue of “Roseland NYC Live” is also printed in one limited edition on double red vinyl with gatefold cover, poster and a reproduction of the “backstage” VIP pass used at the concert. Also the CD digipack contains the “backstage” pass as well as a twelve-page booklet. There tracklisthowever, is the same for both versions.
A gift to the fans that comes in the midst of a new very long break in the saga of the English band (16 years have already passed since “Third” even more than the 11 that elapsed between the latter and its predecessor), while at least Beth Gibbons is about to give us his first real solo album (“Lives Outgrown”) after the jewel created in tandem with Rustin Man 22 years ago (“Out Of Season”). A wonderful opportunity to savor one of the most memorable live shows of the 90s, then. But be careful, nostalgia for Portishead might overwhelm you. Then don't say we didn't warn you.
05/05/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM