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the long nights spent listening to old soul and funk
records together:
He said at the time that if he became big, I could D.J.
for him on tour. It was all pie-in-the-sky in those days,
really. But when Geoff did the first Portishead album, it
actually started selling well. [Laughs.] So he took me on
two world tours.153
* * *
150
Uhelszki 1995.
151
Darling 1995.
152
Newsday 1995.
153
Heller 2009.
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DUMMY
Gibbons quickly established that she would not conduct
interviews, not only to avoid fielding endless questions
about her lyrics contents, but also due to uncertainty
about the way that people would perceive the music.154
I do get nervous and paranoid and that other stuff but,
really, it was the fact that when the album came out I
wasn t sure if it was any good or not. You could have
said it was crap and I d probably have agreed with you
whereas now I know it s not bollocks.155
Her reluctance created this nonsense mystery-woman
thing, 156 and when Barrow hated being photographed
That s not what I am in the industry for; that s not why
I make music 157 the two positions were written about
as if they were a pose, an attempt to appear enigmatic.
As the two signatories to Go! Beat, Gibbons and Barrow
were the focus of the media attention, and Portishead
were written about in early days as if they were a
duo. Barrow expressed in interviews his anxiety that
Dave McDonald and Adrian Utley were not receiving
adequate recognition and characteristically cited his own
naivete at the industry process.158
In truth they were simply uninterested in navigating the
channels of biographical exposure, identity performance,
154
B.B.C. 2010.
155
Clark 1995.
156
Taraska 1997.
157
Taraska 1997.
158
Goldberg 1997b.
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R. J . WHEATON
and publicity stunts that are expected of successful bands.
As Barrow told Julie Taraska in 1997:
There is this huge gap between rock n roll bands and
the general public. It s great for people like Oasis; they re
brilliant, they know how to play the game, and you need
that in rock n roll. But we, literally, can t deal that way.
Even if it prevents us from selling records and it does
sometimes we get really unhappy doing TV things
and stuff like that. We re not into lip-synching and all
that crap.159
* * *
Dummy contains relatively few windows-down belt-out
melodies; very few hooks of such extravagant catchiness
that would they anchor frequent radio play. Those do
exist, of course: Sour Times is a song of brilliant
complexity and density within its first 36 seconds, but
when the refrain breaks Nobody loves me it pulls
the rest of the song into its tight orbit. It s impossible to
hear other parts of the song without feeling the gravita-
tional pull of that semitone descent.
But elsewhere melodic subtlety dominates. Verses on
songs like Glory Box and Wandering Star have tight,
intricate internal rhythms pockets of local melodic
play. Songs like It s a Fire, and It Could be Sweet
contain gorgeous melodic fragments assembled only by
the extravagantly graceful phrasing that Beth Gibbons
brings to them. Phrases are cast out like celestial bodies
159
Taraska 1997.
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well beyond their apparent limits, words selected almost
arbitrarily for emphasis. Not knowing what will happen
next, you cannot stop listening. You do not have the
reassurance that a predictable melodic resolution is
imminent. At some moments the phrases are loose,
generous, almost speculative; in others strong with
inertia and inevitability. The listener can only regard
with wonder the passage of these melodies through the
flares and silence of the music below.
There is little to distinguish verse from chorus in
Wandering Star. The song barely pauses; Gibbons
vocal changes little in pitch or in tone. The entire song
takes place on the first five notes of a B minor scale,
with the exception of the last note before each verse,
which dips a semitone to converge on the major third
of the dominant chord. It seems like a simple melody.
But there is a tightly coiled tension augmented by the
bleakly abstract arrangement of the song. The chorus
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