Day After Day #104: Sour Times

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

Sour Times (1994)

When it comes to audacious debuts, it's pretty tough to beat Portishead's 1994 entry on the music scene. Hailing from Bristol in the U.K., the group featured singer Beth Gibbons and multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow, who teamed up with guitarist Adrian Utley. The sound they created was unlike anything else out at the time, especially given the popularity of grunge in North America and BritPop in the U.K.

Portishead's music sounded like a theme for a Bond film that hadn't been released, combining Gibbons' detached and melancholy vocals with the cinematic sounds of a spaghetti western, mixing in Utley's guitar, theremin and hip-hop flourishes like scratching and sampling. They were quickly lumped into the trip-hop genre with groups like Massive Attack, but Portishead had a sound of its own.

Second single "Sour Times" was what really kicked things off for the band, aided by a sample of Lalo Schifrin's "Danube Incident" from 1967's More Mission: Impossible. It was dark, slinky and sinister as Gibbons croons about infidelity.

"To pretend no one can find/The fallacies of morning rose/Forbidden fruit, hidden eyes/Courtesies that I despise in me/Take a ride, take a shot now/'Cause nobody loves me, it's true/Not like you do."

Lounge music was making a comeback in the mid-'90s but this wasn't some Esquivel space age, Art Deco shizz. Portishead was mixing retro and futuristic and the results were incredible.

"Who am I, what and why/'Cause all I have left is my memories of yesterday/Oh these sour times/'Cause nobody loves me, it's true/Not like you do."

I remember it getting played on WFNX here and being wowed by it immediately, but "Sour Times" took a little longer to hit in the U.K. It reached #57 on the U.K. Singles Chart upon initial release, but after the next single "Glory Box" became a hit in 1995, "Sour Times" was re-released and went up to #13. In the U.S., it went to #53 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The group was critically acclaimed and its debut album Dummy won the Mercury Music in 1995. Portishead took a break until releasing its second, self-titled album in 1997. They moved away from sampling as much on that album, using more live instrumentation. But since then, Portishead has only released one more album, 2008's Third. They toured periodically since then, last playing in 2022 at a benefit concert. Gibbons recently released a single from a forthcoming solo album.

Ultimately, Portishead remained as mysterious as their music. They're not officially broken up, so there might be more music on the way, but there might not. Whatever happens, they've left behind three interesting and excellent albums.