From the official blog: “Our apologies to anybody disappointed by our recently announced tour not coming close to where you live. We know many cities are missing but we’re unable to add more shows this year due to personal reasons. Hopefully we’ll be able to get to Australia, New Zealand, the US and everywhere else we’ve missed at some point”.

Unfortunately, Portishead has chosen only few countries to play in Europe for the promotion of their new album for this year. Many fans are disappointed about their decision to have a limited tour period but as Geoff Barrow says, this happens due to personal reasons which he doesn’t specify.

Probably, these dates are not a “strict” tour but more like a vacation for them to get rest from their hard time releasing the album. The sure thing is that many people will be disappointed much more because they will have to wait for 2009 to see their band playing again in a location near them! And what about those people who were anxiously waiting Portishead to come in their country and suddenly realized that only few countries were included in their tour dates? (For example, Portishead are playing in Italy but not in the capital or in only one town as they have a “limited” tour but in Milan and Florence which is a very small town for a mini tour and they refused other main countries and important stations for their European tour such as Greece, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and much more). Also, no US tour will follow but just a date in Coachella Festival in Indio.

I really hope you will get over your problems. We expect a lot from you!

Adrian Utley gave an interview recently to Billboard saying that the new album is “a really strong record and it’s adventurous” . “Beth [Gibbons'] voice is as powerful as ever. The uptempo tracks are never going to be drum’n'bass, but they do hit 120 BPMs in some places.” He also says about Coachella Festival: “They’ve been asking us for quite a few years, it seems like a good place to play, being out in the desert, and it was started by what seems to be some pretty cool people.”

He adds about the new album that, “It sounds nothing like ‘Dummy’ or ‘Portishead,’ but it’s definitely its older brother or sister. It’s the same mindset we’ve always had, only further down the road.”

Admitting the band’s creative process can be “very slow,” with some tracks from “Third” percolating for four years, Utley says the members have drawn upon an eclectic mix for musical inspiration, including recordings by Can, the Silver Apples, Joy Division, early Human League and “weird doom metal band” Ohm.

“There was never no Portishead,” notes Utley. “It was just we’d had enough, and we didn’t have any ideas. We all got on with various different things, but we worked on each others’ projects. There was always a Portishead. We have ongoing business, obviously, to deal with — permissions and compilations and film requests, even if we’re not doing anything at all.”

From Billboard

The cover and tracklist of the new Portishead album “Third” revealed. Tracklist is:

“Silence”, “Hunter”, “Nylon Smile”, “The Rip”, “Plastic”, “We Carry On”, “Deep Water”, “Machine Gun”, “Small”, “Magic Doors” and “Threads”. The albums will be released April 14 (Europe) and April 28 (USA) by Island Records and Mercury (USA). Portishead were touring the press these days and gave an interview to the Observer. Some parts:

“Two minutes and 10 seconds in, the scene is finally set for Beth Gibbons’s vocal to make its entrance. But however effectively the listener has been softened up for this momentous event, no one will quite be prepared for the pitch of ecstatic anguish at which her voice announces itself. ‘Wounded and afraid inside my head,’ Beth flails poignantly, as a Tardis seems to take off in the background, ‘falling through changes … Did you know what I lost? Do you know what I wanted?’”, “It’s stunning stuff. And this is just the opening number. Later on, once Third (for that is the title: it is, after all, Portishead’s third album – well, if you don’t count the live one) is properly up and running, it features a run of five or six songs which are not just worthy of the records this band were making 10 or even 14 years ago, but feel like the sonic destination which they were always meant to arrive at.”

The whole interesting interview is here.

Also, Portishead gave an interview to German newspaper “Welt” and you can see a live video featuting Geoff talking about the new album “Third”. The link of the interview and the video is here.

Portishead have just announced the support bands for their Spring tour.

A Hawk and A Hacksaw will appear at:

Oporto Coliseum (March 26), Lisbon Coliseum (March 27), Milan Alcatraz (March 30), Florence Sashall (March 31), Manchester Apollo (April 9), London Hammersmith Apollo (April 10), Edinburgh Corn Exchange (April 12), Wolverhampton Civic (April 13) and London Brixton Academy (April 17).

Kling Klang will appear at:

Munich Tonhalle (April 2), Berlin Columbiahalle (April 3), Copenhagen KB Halle (April 4), Cologne Palladium (April 6), Amsterdam HMH (April 7), Paris Zenith (May 5), Paris Zenith (May 6), Brussels Forest National (May 8).

For more info about Portishead shows check tour dates section.

More about the support artists

A Hawk and a Hacksaw is a band from New Mexico. The band mainly consists of Jeremy Barnes and violinist Heather Trost. The music is inspired by eastern European and particularly Balkan traditions, and is mostly instrumental with occasional vocals, shouts and cheers. Visit their official site.

Kling Klang is a 5 piece heavy experimental synthesiser krautrock orchestra with amplified vintage synths, futuristic riffs, electric guitars and live drums based in both Liverpool and Edinburgh. As you can read from their Myspace site it’s an experimental band and present Liverpool’s future rock. Check out their website.

Post-punk icon Mark Stewart has recently listened to the new Portishead album “Third” and says that the album will be well worth the wait.
The former Pop Group frontman and current Maffia leader received an advance copy of Third and waxed thoughtful on the disc for German magazine SPEX.

“On »Third«, I can make out several treasures that most likely found their way onto the record that way. For example, »Small« reminds me of Pierre Henry’s »Psyche Rock«.”

The very German-sounding »We Carry On« sees Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley clashing Joy Division with Techno beats and Blixa Bargeld guitars. Most of all, however, I detect several references to fairly cheesy Progressive Rock – as played by the likes of Nektar or Embryo in the 1970s. Here, these references actually sound more like excerpts from the soundtracks of amazing horror B-movies. One of the album’s most interesting new tracks, »Magic Doors«, reverts to the old DJ method: Portishead take a Funk beat and slow it down, pitch it right down to half-speed, then add one of Beth Gibbons mournful litanies. In this, Portishead follow the lead of Led Zeppelin who, a few decades earlier, took Blues numbers from the 1930s and slowed them down to half their speed”.

“Small”, “Magic Doors”, “Deep Water”, first single “Machine Gun” are among the 11 new Portishead tracks we can look forward to when Third hits UK shops April 14 via Island.

No US release dates yet. For full review visit Spex Magazine here.

As Geoff has written in Portishead blog, the band has travelled to France, Germany and Easton “filming stuff” for the future. We don’t have details yet but probably the band is filming a new video for their new single (”Machine Gun”?) and footage for their upcoming shows in Europe.

We have already seen some film content from ATP the previous year.

There is a video from YouTube of the ATP Channel which was programmed by Portishead.

ATP trailer leading into Brian De Palma’s “Phantom of the Paradise”. Watch here.