Portishead's new album, Third, is currently being streamed on LastFM and will remain there till Sunday night (it goes on sale the next day). So far, the site reckons about 250,000 people have listened to the tracks in the last 48 hours which, apparently, is some sort of record.
A quick squint at the appropriate page shows that reactions to the album have been almost uniformly positive, with The Rip currently standing out as the fave track.
Go out into the blogosphere at large, however, and the response has been a bit less We Heart The 'Head and a bit more about boredom. Highway Five is typical, snarking "It's been ten years since the misfiring second LP Portishead. Ten years? Has it been worth it? Frankly, no!". Seattle newspaper The Stranger puts it a degree more succinctly: "Welcome back, trip-hop comfort food!"
So, you know, go listen to it and make up your own mind. But what explains the critical disparity? Could it have anything to do with Portishead being the very first music to be uploaded to LastFM back in the early noughties? Spooky.
