Portishead

Portishead formed in Bristol in August 1991 when Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons met on an Enterprise Allowance course, and guitarist Adrian Utley made it a trio. The definitive Bristol template: Barrow's crackling sampled loops and Utley's noir guitar under Gibbons's utterly exposed voice. Dummy (1994) won the 1995 Mercury Prize, then came Portishead (1997), Roseland NYC Live (1998) and the harsher Third (2008). 'Roads' is the one people reach for when they need a song to carry something too big for words, and decades on it's lost nothing. No album has followed Third, but in 2025 Barrow said the band never broke up, and they played together at a benefit concert that September.

From the notes for Episode 07 · fact-checked Oct 4, 2026.