Glory Days Are Back With a Vengeance

By Rock Simon Price

pop

PortisheadApollo Manchester

Har Mar Superstar Komedia Brighton

‘After a certain age,” wrote Albert Camus, “each man is responsible for his own face.” Divas, as we all know, only truly come into their own in later life. We like our female stars to have lived a little, and suffered a little.

Even back in 1994, a mere child of 29, Beth Gibbons already had that kind of aura. After a decade in the shadows (her natural element), during which the notoriously diffident singer has spoken barely a word, her enigma has only increased.

You can understand why she, and Portishead, wanted to take a breather. The fate of all originators is to sit and watch a parade of poor imitators, and so it was that the Bristol trio who, having inadvertently created trip hop (a phrase they loathe), had to see countless talent-vacuums rake in the riches.

Overexposure to even the sweetest flavours cloys, and Dummy, a stunning blend of spooked-out cinematic samples, ghostly theremins, spy-movie basslines, slo-mo scratching, and that extraordinary lady- in-the-radiator-from-Eraserhead voice, was one of those records that the whole world had to own.

But it’s been long enough now. Long enough, indeed, that when one thinks of divas called Beth, a younger, chubbier one comes to mind (of whom, more later). Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, the musical wing of the band, have had their heads turned by avant-noise. Their cunningly titled comeback album, Third, draws upon drone-rock and krautrock influences, but Gibbons’ voice, as haunted as ever, sits in this new context surprisingly well. Caught in green vortices, dwarfed by a screen showing childhood home movies, the six members of the Portishead live band return to recontextualise Dummy in the context of Third, and vice versa.

The 1994 material has been augmented to fit the band’s 2008 aesthetic without being ruined: midway through “Glory Box”, when Gibbons sings “This is the beginning of for ever… and ever”, it breaks down into eight bars of mesmerising dub echo. And when you hear the pulverising drums of “Machine Gun”, you’re in no doubt that the new noisenik Portishead has a place alongside the old.

“I just want you to know I’m made of booze and MDMA,” warns Har Mar Superstar. “And the MDMA was an accident…”

Har Mar Superstar is the alter-ego of Sean Tillman, a sex- obsessed funkateer from the outskirts of Minneapolis whose biggest brush with mainstream celebrity was fronting an ad campaign for Lynx, and whose appearance (small, chubby, with a balding mullet) has been compared to porn star Ron Jeremy.

It’s a valid comparison in more ways than one. Just as Ron Jeremy allowed men who were, shall we say, not conventionally attractive to imagine that they too could get the superhot girl, so Har Mar proves that you don’t have to look like everyone’s idea of a pop star to have the skills.

The (glorious) humour to his act led many to dismiss him as a novelty, but make no mistake: this guy’s got what it takes. He can write a killer tune, sing a mean falsetto, and do it all – literally – standing on his head. Which is how he begins tonight’s low-key support slot, before performing press-ups, then embarking on a set- long striptease in which a Menudo T-shirt, Xanadu sweater and sports vest are removed until all he’s wearing is a pair of Y-fronts, into which he reaches and rips out pubic hair, scattering it like confetti. Gross-out showmen don’t come much better.

It comes as little surprise, then, before another new track called “Girls Only”, when he tells us that it was originally composed for a Disney Channel pop group called the Cheetah Girls, “…but they looked into my background, and decided it was wrong for me to write a song aimed at 12-year-olds”.

Before “Powerlunch” – a funky tale of eroticism in the workplace – he reminds us that the backing vocal belongs to “Beth Ditto before she was famous”. It took Ditto a while to break into the public’s affections. Maybe it’s Har Mar’s turn next. Just don’t expect him to get Disneyfied when being disreputable is much more fun.

(c) 2008 Independent on Sunday, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.