This is an album I've listened to loads over the years but not really with a critical ear. There are elements of it I shouldn't like, the scratchy stuff which with other artists and in full flow I've always seen as a bit pointless. It's never particularly distracted me on Dummy though.
I've tried to figure out exactly when do I decide to listen to it because it's very much a "mood" album to my ears and
@threespires draws a great picture in his review. I can't say I have a particular mood to listen to it in and it does lack the overall consitency of something like the Blue Nile which was up recently or my ulitmate mood album (the under appreciated on this thread) Astral Weeks.
So, I've no emotional attachment to it, I don't think I bought it at the time it came out, but somehow I heard it sometime and then heard enough to stick with it.
Mysterons is a great opener but could also strangely be offputting, staying just the right side of gimmicky for me but any doubts about the direction the album might go in are dispeled by Sour Times. After which it settles into a groove, I'm not a one for picking out the production and the disparate elements that form the craft but for me, despite the odd bits of probably unnecessary crackle and scratch or whatever it all works.
I have listened ore closely that I would usually to it when playing this week and with particular attention to the vocals. There's an obvious fragility but also a little bit of shape shifting going on to suit the individual tracks. Not to the extent that someone like Aldous Harding (speaking of under appreciated albums on this thread!) does it but enough to keep it interesting. I'm not particularly familiar with Bjork so any comparison there will leave me behind.
There are three stand out tracks, being the first two and of course Roads. Beyond that I think it's an album that hangs together well and has stood the test of time. Nothing I've read this week or heard when listenting to it more closely has changed my view of it particularly. If anything I might have more appreciation than I did about the production and the fact that the elements I might have found offputting I didn't which means they didn't overdo it and it's all well placed. I know what I mean there even if the sentence isn't that well constructed.
I don't love this album but I like it a lot, as it has been for as many years as I've had it and is likely to remain one that gets more than the occasional listen. I've also taken the time to give their other two albums a go. There are bands where consciously or otherwise I've always felt one of their albums was enough and if you had only one Portishead album it would be Dummy but I've probably sold myself short there.
Anyway, for this it's an 8.
