Portishead: Third

Third cannot exist unless everything we know is wrong. It's an abomination unto the laws of nature. And like all abominations worth their salt, it's astonishingly beautiful. Portishead have created a return to form that's also a radical departure. Paradoxically, Third recreates the mood and the aesthetic of Dummy by discarding its techniques and employing a new toolkit. Third sounds as if it were Portishead's eleventh album snatched from an alternate reality, rather than their third in this one. In another potentially universe-detroying contradiction, Beth Gibbons sounds like a torch singer enfeebled by chemotherapy, but her presence is anything but meek. I've always felt that the best music seems imaginary, though music becomes real once it is imagined. Third seems less real the more I listen to it, so by this criterion (and by many others) it's easily one of this year's best albums.