“Third” – Portishead

Rating: 9 / 10

After 11 years, Portishead, the best band to have never written a James Bond theme song, returns with its third album, appropriately titled “Third.”

You’d think with the simple title and artwork that the band is trying to create as little fanfare as possible about their long-awaited return to recorded music.

Regardless, after crafting one of the ’90s most acclaimed albums, “Dummy,” many fans are paying close attention to “Third” and asking whether or not it was worth the wait.

And the answer: Yes.

Many have already pointed out that “Third” is a reinvention of sorts for Portishead, as trip-hop standards like record scratching and jazzy beats are gone.

However, these changes are merely surface-level aspects. The core of Portishead’s sound is still in tact with darkly sparse electronic arrangements underneath Beth Gibbons’ haunting vocals. Departure or not, “Third” is a Portishead record through and through.

As the album plays, one can pick up bits and pieces of other modern bands: a bit of PJ Harvey here, some Postal Service there. Yet the album’s greatest strength is that makes these elements all their own.

On the bleak “Nylon Smile,” Gibbons’ desperate singing invokes real pain as much as it invokes a romantic kind of dependence.

“I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you,” she sings, “and I don’t know what I’ll do without you.” It’s a brilliantly delivered line that reminds listeners of their classic single, “Sour Times” (“Nobody loves me, it’s true / Not like you do”).

Elsewhere on the album is “Deep Water,” the album’s clearest departure from the band’s signature sound.

As a short, mournful song, performed nakedly with just a ukulele and Gibbons’ vocals, it’s sure to be divisive among fans – either being praised as the eye of the storm before single “Machine Gun” or as Portishead’s weakest moment yet.

Nonetheless, the fact that Portishead sounds as brave and unaffected by its long absence as it does on “Third” is astonishing.

The years in the studio have helped make it a cohesive statement of the band’s place in pop music’s history books. No longer a relic of the ’90s, “Third” welcomes Portishead back to the best kind of relevance – the kind that has produced classics and could produce more in years to come.