The band Portishead isn’t usually synonymous with the word “Guitar” but the band is pretty cool in my opinion. Also, the fact that Portishead hasn’t released an album in 10 years is a pretty signifcant reason to cover them now that they’ve released the album “Third”.

I have given the album a preview listen, but I could not even begin to do a proper review at this time as I haven’t listened to it enough. From my first listen, I noticed that it is not much of a trip-hop album. I think this is a good thing, as that style was cool, but has kind of faded from relevance and now sounds a little dated. The album features distorted bass guitar in several places, which could very well be the result of the “OM influence” the band cited in a Billboard.com article (in that article, billboard, obviously not knowing who OM even is, wrote their band name as “ohm”).

I’m interested in giving this album a few more listens, as I think its the type of album that deserves that before fully analyzing it.

-Positive Pitchfork media review of “Third”

-Billboard.com article referenced in this post

So, over a week ago it was announced that Prince was added as a headliner to the Coachella Festival (look above, they even made special graphics for his appearance!). I had sort of already planned on not going, so I was just a little annoyed finding out that this bumped Portishead to sub-headliner status. Sub-headliner status means a shorter set-time.

While Prince is kind of cool, he’s not someone who I would ever really care about seeing. Its a little bit of a shame because Coachella will be Portishead’s first show in 10 years. I know people who are just going for them, or mainly going for them. Anyway, as long as Prince doesn’t let his super-male-diva side take over for too long everything should be alright. Remember what happened with Madonna?

At this point its pretty easy to see that Coachella’s kind of…well…blah, but there still are a ton of good bands playing that I’m kind of bummed to being missing out on…Battles, Aphex Twin, The Breeders, Portishead, Kraftwerk and Autolux. Although I have seen a few of those bands before, and will be seeing The Breeders on their own tour and presumably Portishead, since they have a new record coming out.

- Also: Have a happy Earth Day 2008! Do something positive. -

*(Graphics courtesy of coachella.com).