Third
Mercury Records
Five stars

Against the odds, Portishead has resurfaced after 11 mostly quiet years with its best album yet. Many of the hallmarks remain, but with Third, Portishead seems less interested in cinematic sways and far more concerned with artful compositions and album-craft. The result is one of 2008’s most essential listens. It’s an album that is strange, imaginative, endlessly brilliant and far more fully-realized than anything else members Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley have ever stewed up.

Sounds like:
a less-experimental, more listenable Post-era Bjork