Dummy (1994) Portishead

Written by Meenakshi Nirmalan

I first listened to Portishead’s Dummy in the summer of 2021. I saw the record in FOPP, Covent Garden, one of many amongst the staff recommendations and I was drawn in by its striking navy cover. The cover is fairly minimalistic, with large borders of blue yet also features an eerie, gothic image of a woman, very apt considering the album’s sound. I took a picture of the record and decided I would listen to it properly when I got home.

I was immediately enticed by the album. I remember having it on loop for an entire week during my commute to work that summer. The genre of the album has been dubbed ‘Trip-Hop’ by many, although Portishead don’t necessarily seem to embrace the term. I wasn’t too familiar with this sound prior to listening to Dummy, but since then I have ventured down the rabbit hole, listening to artists such as Massive Attack, Tricky, and so on, and have grown to love the sound. Portishead consists of Beth Gibbons on vocals, Adrian Utley, and also Geoff Barrow and they are based in Bristol. Dummy went on to win the Mercury Prize in 1995, which was well-deserved.

Mysterons is a strong track to open the album with, as it is gritty yet sultry. It has an other-worldly quality to it, both retro and futuristic. It gives the listener a taste of what the album has to offer, without revealing too much too quickly. Sour Times was my favourite track on my first listen; I was immediately captivated by the humanity and emotion found within a track that heavily uses electronic sounds; I felt that there is an immense warmth in its cold, harsh sound. Lyrically, Sour Times is one of the strongest songs. The entirety of the song has well-written and intricate lyrics. However, one of the simplest lines from the song stand out to me the most: “Who am I, what and why / ’Cause all I have is my memories of yesterday / Oh these sour times”. Gibbons really touches into a universal sense of despair, dejection and loneliness, with her velvety vocals.

Wandering Star is also lyrically strong. It juxtaposes a drone-like bass sound, with sensual vocals, characteristic of the entire album. I’d say my most listened to track from the album is Roads: it’s hard to choose an absolute favourite from Dummy, though. When I listened to Glory Box for the first time, I thought it was pretty good but wasn’t the most striking track from the album, despite it being the Portishead song that is most listened to on Spotify. However, the more I listened to it, the more it became one of my favourite tracks. The guitar solo is excellent; it is neither long nor technically difficult. Despite this it is incredibly memorable and the distortion just makes the solo hit the spot. The simplicity of this track is what makes it so brilliant and Glory Box is a strong way to round off the album.

The soundscape of the entire album is stunning. It has the perfect blend of harshness and smoothness; there is a light airiness to the album yet simultaneously has very murky and dark depths to it. Dummy achieves this by combining hazy, sultry vocals, with harsh and glitchy, yet calculated drum machine-generated beats and record scratches, sampling a range of music, notably Ike’s Rap II by Isaac Hayes, used in Glory Box. With this being said, Dummy never feels like it is doing too much at once. It is versatile but not overcrowded. The soundscape has a great ambience to it: intense yet also with a laidback sense of ease.

Whilst the album feels like a cohesive work, I felt that the tracks in the middle of the album stand out less to me; tracks such as It’s a Fire and It Could Be Sweet. That’s not to say they are poor songs, they just weren’t as personally memorable. Other tracks were more striking. However, this is only a minor criticism and ultimately, all the tracks function well in conjunction with one another; Dummy will forever remain one of my favourite albums. It is an album that I can listen to, regardless of mood, regardless of time and place.