. a&e@op.douglas.bc.ca

ijah Bak

 

Portishead at the Rage
December 13, 1997
tmosphere to burn. The show
that was three years in the
coming finally delivered the
English sextet to the Vancou-
ver stage and “yeah, baby,
pah!” it was worth the wait.

When they first appeared on the

usic scene in mid-1994 Portishead
ovided a relief from the steady diet of
anchester pop and the dreaded grunge
bund from Seattle, with their blend of
p-hop grooves, Billie Holiday cum
jouxsie Sioux on vocals, and the bastard
ild of Duane Eddy, Link Wray, and
nio Morricone on guitar.

The source of this groups’ genius falls
y on the shoulders of three players
d their producer/live sound engineer,
ich is a refreshing change from other
glish bands who depend on the
hlents of one songwriter to produce

eir material. With Portishead the
enius lies in the looping and sampling
Geoff Barrows; in the Ennio
Horricone meets the Pixies guitar
rylings of Adrian Utley; and in Beth
ibbons’ lyrical and vocal delivery of
lords of pain and terrible longing _

ed by a delicate voice on the verge
breaking. These elements are
pmbined by clever production (and of
burse good compositions) into the
stinct and readily identifiable sound
at is Portishead.

The only problem this band has had
face from the media is that they are
butinely described as a trip-hop band.
prtishead vigorously deny any claim to
at label and contend that they are a
band that happens to use sampling

on Kurylo

 

  
   
   

he’s not necessarily a household
name yet, but if music critics,

>" industry experts and a rabid,
owing audience are worth their weight
salt, Ms. Kreviazuk is well on her way.
A classically trained piano prodigy,
reviazuk has had her multifaceted

bcals compared to everyone from

anis Morrisette and Joan Osborne to
nda Ronstadt and Rickie Lee Jones.

ler piano-driven tunes evoke memories
early Billy Joel mixed with an upbeat
Arden, with perhaps a touch of Pat

     
    

and looping, in addition to regular rock
instrumentation, and not the other way
around, After seeing them in perform-
ance one can see why they still get so
upset over this labelling. They are first
and foremost a rock band, if that term
means anything at all anymore.

The show began with a DJ (a member
of Portishead) playing some pieces for
approximately 25 minutes, while a film
played across the full screen backdrop
behind the band’s gear. The music, as DJ
music goes, was flat and dull, and drew
derisive comments from the people
standing near me in front of the stage.
In contrast the club, or whoever was in
charge of the sound, played great classic
funk and R&B (and by funk and R&B I
don’t mean fuckin’ Mariah Carey, Will
Smith or any of that other modern
bullshit) before the DJ started to “play”
(I’m never sure whether to call DJs
musicians, seeing as how they neither
play an instrument nor actually compose
music, per se.).

The club was over-filled when the
band finally took the stage. The crowd
roared when the diminutive chanteuse
Gibbons appeared and for the rest of the
evening the crowd offered its undying
devotion to her. The band were dressed
in jeans and whatever shirt seemed to be
cleanest that day. Their seeming
indifference to their appearance helped
lower the barrier (metaphorically
speaking) between the audience and the
group, and by the end of the set Beth
was bumming smokes from people near
the front of the stage.

The set began with a song off of their
eponymously titled sophomore effort
with the stage beautifully lit from
behind in a wash of reds and crimsons
which nicely silhouetted the band. In
fact the entire night was highlighted by

Benatar’s spunkiness thrown in. Want a
few more hints? How about an updated
Joni Mitchell, or a radio-friendly Ani
DiFranco with a piano instead of a
loaded guitar?

But the critical easy street of compari-
son is utterly unfair to Chantal. Under
These Rocks and Stones is quite possibly
the best debut album of the 90s, and
creates a thoroughly individual niche for
a thoroughly individual performer.
Remarkably consistent in an inconsistent
business, Under These Rocks and Stones is
a super collection of crafty, extremely
listenable pop tunes. Records this

lue lights licked our eyes

excellent production—from the sound
engineer to the lighting effects—every
aspect attended to with taste and style.
(Especially when the ten spotlights lined
up across the top of the backdrop screen
projected blacklights onto the floor of
the stage which then reflected up from
the floor onto the performers giving the
whole stage a cool ethereal glow. Wow.)

For any other band to pepper their set
with as many slow, minor key songs as
Portishead would be performance
suicide, but for this band those songs are
their stock-in-trade. One after another
they poured their delicious anguish on
the assembled gathering; from the new
“Mourning Air,’ ‘Cowboys,’ and ‘All
Mine,’ to the old ‘Glory Box,’ each fresh
number was played with spirit and
intensity.

The most stunning moment of the
show (for that matter of any show in
recent memory) came about half way
through the new song ‘Elysium,’ when
the band transcended mere distortion
and loudness and reached the apex of
the song in a wildly deafening sustained
roar that utterly overloaded the senses
for its duration. The backdrop screen
was playing images of swirls and whorls
over grids when the band attacked the
crowd with sound. In short, they HAD
ME. They were so loud that I could feel
the music literally touching my face. But
it wasn’t that hard on the ears, as the
show was for the most part fairly low in
volume. It was the most effective use of a
surprise jump in decibels that I have ever
witnessed and was clearly the best song
out of an evening of “best songs.”

The only song that is clearly obliga-
tory for Portishead to play is their first
and biggest hit to date, “Sour Times
(Nobody Loves Me).’ On their first tour
to support their debut album Dummy,

hank God for Chantal: ©

e made her just right, if you ask me...

consistent aren't supposed to come until
the third or fourth try, are they?
Kreviazuk’s been blessed with a
versatile voice, easily transcending from
airy ballad to attitude-laden anthem.
She’s lyrically strong as well; Kreviazuk’s
dichotomous combination of confidence
and vulnerability echoes the range in
vocals perfectly, and vice versa. She
rarely makes the typical frosh mistake of
using too much of a good thing; the
arrangements are modest when they
need to be, and lush when they gotta be.
Kreviazuk follows the Crash Test

Dummies out of the Manitoba music

  
 

 

ji

    
   

= USN

 

MOTORSPORTS

 

 

Portishead pair

the band were criticized for saving this
song for their encore. It takes major
cojones to hold back your only hit to date
when you're a beginning band. With two
albums to their credit Portishead are able
to play the song in their regular set and
still have plenty of punch for their
encores. ‘Sour Times’ rounded out their
set, but as anyone who has followed this
group for the last couple of years can
attest, this song has appeared in so many
different versions that the crowd didn’t
recognize it until Beth began singing.
Instead of trying to simulate the North
African dulcimer-like instrument from
the album version, Adrian Utley cranked
up the tremolo on his amplifier and led
the band in a take on this song that
owed more to Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’
than Morricone’s film scores. The song
climaxed with Beth screaming the
refrain “Nobody loves me, it’s true...” over
and over as the band crescendoed nicely
behind her wailing voice.

The level of interplay this group
achieves in concert is astounding. Two
DJs (one of them alternates as a
drummer for most of the show), a
guitarist, a keyboardist/synth player, a
bassist who shifted between a stand-up
double bass and one of his three—count
"em three—electric basses, and a small,

scene, and seems destined to duplicate
the Dummies’ sales south of the border.
‘Surrounded,’ the album’s second single,
is receiving tons of airplay down south,
and Chantal recently sold out her first
big headlining show in Detroit.
Ironically, the 24-year-old Kreviazuk
might have been on the hit parade much
earlier if not for a less-than-enthusiastic
attitude. For a long time, Chantal was
content to write radio jingles and
perform the odd lounge gig for extra
cash, but wasn’t serious about pursuing a
career in music. Only a serious accident
while driving in Italy three years ago

Car-crushing, racing competition. featuring

Bigfoot, Snake Bite, Airborne
Ranger, High Anxiety, Shredder,
Obsession, Big Dummy IW and more!

BC Place Stadium
7 pm. Saturday, January 31, 1998
Tickets at Ticketmaster 280-4444

(For a chance to win free tickets, see page 4)

Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrows in a surprisingly cheerful mood for the usually sombre

   

OP File Photo

powerfully lunged English woman from
the countryside combined to deliver a
searing antidote to the seasonal blahs. If
only we could entice them into releasing
a live album off of this tour. After
listening to their new album the day
after the show two things struck me
immediately:

They played all of the songs from the
new album; and

The live versions of the new material
far out-stripped their studio counter-
parts.

If you take your music listening
seriously and are frugal with your
concert-going bucks, then you have to
see this group the next time they come
around. The atmosphere and the crowd
blended together and the afterglow of
the concert was still visible on the faces
of the lucky few in attendance as they
slowly filtered out into the night, only to
merge with the crowd from the
Canucks’ game. It was a typical
Vancouver Saturday night: 18 000
people wasted three hours of their lives
watching overdressed men skate after a
piece of frozen rubber, while a few
hundred yards away a much smaller
number found sweet reprieve from
mundanity in a precious encounter with
English sorrow.

gave her the spark to share her music on
a wider scale. “The accident was a wake-
up call. I realized that music was
something I could give rather than
something I could use.”

Lucky for us, she’s given us a real gem.
Under These Rocks and Stones is a highly
recommended listen; it’s already gone
gold in Canada, so a few fans out there
seem to agree. And after the lucky few at
the Fish last Saturday spread the word,
I've a feeling there will be many, many
more folks on the Kreviazuk bandwagon
before she’s done.

      

  

 

 

 

 

The Other Press January 14, 1997 7