‘60 Songs That Explain the ’90s’: Portishead, “Glory Box”

60 Songs That Explain the ’90s is back for its final stretch run. (And a brand-new book!) Join The Ringer’s Rob Harvilla as he treks through the soundtrack of his youth, one song (and embarrassing anecdote) at a time. Follow and listen for free on Spotify. In Episode 108 of 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s—yep, you read that right—we’re covering Portishead’s “Glory Box.” Read an excerpt below. And if you’re in Los Angeles on November 16, check out the 60 Songs and Bandsplain crossover event celebrating Rob’s new book.

What is this voice? What is the deal with Beth Gibbons? How would you describe Beth’s diction here? Playful? Caustic? Bright? Malicious? Theatrical? All of ’em? None of ’em? Who do you hear? You hear Billie Holiday? You hear Dusty Springfield? You hear a Disney villain? You hear a Bond girl? You hear a Bond villain? No, Mr. Cupid, I expect you to die!

What does Beth Gibbons think about Beth Gibbons? “I’m not technically a very good singer. If anyone says I am, I know they don’t know what they’re talking about. If I wanted to be, I’d have to give up smoking and have lessons.” That’s Beth in a 1998 book called Seven Years of Plenty: A Handbook of Irrefutable Pop Greatness 1991-1998, by Ben Thompson. 1991 to 1998 is eight years, but OK. Portishead consists primarily of three people. You got Beth. You got Geoff Barrow, on lots of stuff but primarily on turntables. And you got Adrian Utley, primarily on guitar. Beth and Geoff meet while participating in an Enterprise Allowance Scheme. I’m going to be honest with you and say that I got really excited by the word Scheme. I pictured Beth and Geoff meeting while devising, y’know, an Ocean’s Eleven–style audacious crime spree. Right? I pictured a stylish caper. I pictured Beth and Geoff hanging upside down and stealing the Pink Panther diamond or whatever. Right? How appropriate, given this band’s flagrant old spy movie vibe, the Mission: Impossible of it all.

Songs That Explain the ’90s, the Book

If you’ve ever listened to 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s and thought, “I wish this podcast were a book,” do we have some news for you. Songs That Explain the ’90s is out now on Twelve Books. Order here.

But, no. No. The Enterprise Allowance Scheme was an ’80s Margaret Thatcher–era British political thing that gave young people extra government money if they set up a small business. That’s boring. That’s so boring. But Beth and Geoff meet, and they do set up, in a manner of speaking, a small business called Portishead, a band named after the town near Bristol where Geoff grew up. A town that Geoff once described to SPIN magazine by saying, “I really don’t like the place. It’s a place you can go to and die.” And then Beth says, “That’s why we named ourselves after it.” That’s funny. C’mon. She’s a little playful. The first song they work on together is called “It Could Be Sweet.” Dig the feature-length, majestic, tragic arc of the word nothing here.

Perhaps you’re like me, and you can close your eyes and clearly picture the cover of Portishead’s 1994 debut album, Dummy: It’s a quite striking, almost nauseating blue, with a blurry photo of Beth sitting in a chair in a fancy dress with blood on her face and hooked up to an IV, looking disconcertingly dazed. Perhaps you’re like me and you were not previously aware that this cover photo of Beth is a still from a short film Portishead devised and, perhaps to their chagrin, starred in called To Kill a Dead Man. Adrian plays an oily businessman type, Geoff plays a dirtbag assassin type, Beth plays a femme fatale type. They’re all not great actors, necessarily—Beth, maybe, though, if she took lessons and smoked more—but they’re all extremely well cast. Let’s leave it at that, actually.

The drums on “It Could Be Sweet,” though. The precise and bone-dry psh psh psh psh of the cymbals, the dollhouse-tea-set delicacy of it all. It’s a minor technical marvel; it’s a marvelous major triumph of vibe. Looking back on this song while talking to BBC 6 in 2010, Geoff says, “It wasn’t soul, but then, it kind of was. And it wasn’t overtly jazzy. And it wasn’t folk. But she brought this adultness to the track. And all of a sudden it was—this is actually real. And she’s singing about things that she obviously cares about.” You can find that quote in a cool Trash Theory video about “Glory Box” as well.

So this is real. Geoff is somewhat of a studio veteran by the time Portishead kicks off; in fact he was a tape operator at Coach House Studio in Bristol when Massive Attack was making Blue Lines. Geoff has said that he was a lousy tape op, but he made great tea. That’s gonna about do it for Geoff and self-deprecation. Geoff once told Melody Maker, “Ambient music has never particularly appealed to me. Push ‘Go’ on a synthesizer. Make some noise. Put some delay on it, and put a couple sheep noises on it. I’m not into it.” Rude! I believe Geoff’s got some specific targets in mind, there. The KLF would like a word, Geoff. But let’s leave that at that, as well, actually. Sheep noises will not suffice, then, in terms of a hook.

And this is how Dummy, this is how Portishead first reaches me in 1994, an alt-rockin’ midwestern teenager with no ambient sheep music experience, only a little Massive Attack experience, and for that matter very little cool old spy movie experience. Portishead first reaches me via the single “Sour Times,” which has a recognizable retro-futuristic cool old junk drawer feel that makes a lot of sense if you’ve spent 1994 getting heavy into Beck, or Stereolab, or, like, “A Girl Like You” by Edwyn Collins. You remember that shit? Is that a sacrilegious comparison from Portishead’s perspective? Too bad.

[Rob hums guitar solo.] That’s right. That’s exactly how that guitar solo sounds. Too many poor-ass singers! Not enough poor-ass songs! That’s what he says there, right? Listen. There was a subset of 1994 alternative rock popular enough to sneak on the radio and MTV and yet ultra-cool and wily enough that I’d hear it and go, I don’t know how old this is. This is not the most sophisticated initial framework through which to receive Portishead, but, well, the statute of limitations expired on that, too. What elevates Dummy, what enshrines Dummy, is that you get all these warped old samples, you get that disorienting sense of timelessness, you get all these wonderful dusty old machines, but you get all the ghosts in those machines, too. All the ghosts are played by Beth Gibbons.

I dig the beat here, right? The alarm clock boom bap of it all. Adrian Utley’s less-is-more fuzzed-out guitar: bwwwwooowwww. But you also get Beth singing, wailing, moaning, declaiming whatever it is she’s saying there, on the song “Strangers.” I can’t think of another album that delivers quite the same sort of delightful whiplash pivot between cool detached post-human sounds and bone-chillingly extreme human frailty. This song is called “Numb.” You ever heard a cooler snare drum sound in your life? No, you have not.

However. Does the coolest snare drum sound she’s ever heard in her life make Beth Gibbons feel less lonely? No, it does not.

In my California years, my Bay Area years, one time I went to this super-cool San Francisco apartment open-mic night sorta living room concert deal, and this dude had just a microphone and a loop pedal—he was a beatboxer, right—and he did a full looped beatboxed version of Portishead’s “Wandering Star.” It is difficult, perhaps, to convey the exquisite desolation of Beth Gibbons’s vocal approach while beatboxing; I don’t know if I would recommend getting romantically involved with a Portishead-covering beatboxer. You’re living on the edge there, emotionally. You’re gonna end up living a Portishead song. I’m generalizing, but come on. But on the other hand, this dude did a great job this time, and thereafter, every time I go back to Dummy, “Wandering Star” sounds ever so slightly more human to me.

“Wandering Star” sounds more human to me now, but it also remains, like, wildly depressing, right? “The blackness / The darkness / Forever.” I have always heard Portishead primarily as primo moping music. Moping, whining, sulking, pouting. Being a grumpus. Not calling ladies on the phone. Feeling extravagantly sorry for oneself. Over-romanticizing one’s solitude, et cetera. This does not appear to be the way most people heard Dummy. The moping approach does not appear to be either of the top two approaches most people took to Dummy. Generally, you hear two things about this record. One: It is apparently stupendous background music. You’d hear it in restaurants, you’d hear it in both high- and not-as-high-end clothing boutiques, you’d hear it at the parties where all the girls were so they wouldn’t have been home even if I had tried to call them, which I didn’t. Dummy became not ambient music, exactly—not Lo-Fi Beats to Study To—but this record did prove compatible with a wide variety of activities and social situations. Put it that way.

Or! Or, put it the other way. People thought it was make-out music. Music for … smooching. Amorousness. Et cetera. On YouTube you can find footage of Geoff and Beth, on camera, in a church, being asked by a cheerful Canadian interviewer how they feel about Dummy being described as “the greatest shagging record of 1994.” That’s another way to put the other way to put it. That’s apparently the Canadian way to put it. They don’t shag in Canada. Do they? Don’t answer that. Do you find this music appropriate for, uh, smooching? Don’t answer that, either. I just have a very hard time imagining some suave Canadian dude being like, Hold on, baby, we need some music, yeah, let me put on some, yeah, all right, check this out, baby.

That song’s called “Biscuit.” I just googled “Do they shag in Canada,” and I got what I deserved. That’s all I have to say about that. “Biscuit” is the second-to-last song on Dummy. The last song is “Glory Box.”

Dig that slow-motion gnarly guitar, man. Phenomenal. Adrian Utley on guitar. The chopped-and-screwed Jimi Hendrix, they call him. Nobody calls him that. That is also dumb. That is Cheeto chamber–caliber dumb. Now, that line’s got make-out music overtones for some of you, perhaps, not unreasonably, but Beth’s focus, not surprisingly, is elsewhere.

Talking to The Independent on Sunday in 1994, Beth says, “The key line in the song really is Move over and give us some room, because I do think women are very much taken for granted. I’m more an easygoing than a rabid feminist, but women in general are very supportive to me. History has made them like that. And this is not something that is always reciprocated.” She elaborates on this theme after Adrian’s extra-rad guitar solo.

In 1995 Dummy won the prestigious Mercury Prize, awarded to the best album of the year from the United Kingdom or Ireland, beating out Oasis’s Definitely Maybe, Tricky’s Maxinquaye, PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love, and many other fine records, including a Van Morrison album I was unfamiliar with. I wouldn’t say Portishead recoiled from the spotlight, precisely, but Portishead put out a second album, self-titled, in 1997, in a vein similar to Dummy’s but just a little harsher, sharper, less … what’s the word? Warm. It’s not as warm. It’s still pretty great, though. What it doesn’t have is a “Glory Box.”

To hear the full episode, click here. Subscribe here and check back every Wednesday for new episodes. And to preorder Rob’s new book, Songs That Explain the ’90s, visit the Hachette Book Group website.