The Springfield box traces the 1961-1995 ascent of Dusty
the gutsy Londoner (nee Mary O'Brien), from the
peaceniked folk of the Springfields to the Spectorized
girl-group numbers that alienated folkie fans, to the
torch-pop tunes penned by the likes of Bacharach/David,
Goffin/King, and Randy Newman. Whether Dusty was fronting
as a smoky femme fatale, a rust-belting Detroit soul
sistuh, or American po' white trash, she was famously
relentless in her quest to make you her man.
By voicing verboten neuroses we've all been schooled in
not admitting, Springfield crystallizes weakness (and
breaks on through it) powering home one doormat anthem
after another in a torrent of hook-heavy songs that read
like the co-dependency section of a DSM-IIIR. But to
reduce hits like "Wishin' And Hopin'," and "You Don't
Have To Say You Love Me" to little more than the stuff of
pre-women's lib self-subjection is to miss the point
entirely. If her songwriters laughed themselves silly
trying to render love's blindness, Dusty both got the
joke and respected the darker truths of the lyrics.
Set against the hits churned out by Dusty's rack of
hired guns, Bristol depressives Portishead seem a mite
short on melodic devise and pop construction. If
Portishead studio mole Geoff Barrow could have ordered
up B sides like Dusty, he might have been able to stave
off the writer's block that tormented him for two years
after his band's 1994 noir-hop sacred text, Dummy.
This year's Portishead finds Barrow shaking off
pressure to top his first effort. He goes with what he
knows: jamming, looping, pressing to vinyl, sampling,
re-pressing to vinyl, and crooner Beth Gibbon's
stalker-chic vocals through the resulting mix.
As before, Gibbons singes more than sings. On the
opening "Cowboys," she writhes inside the squeaky
dumbwaiter to relationship hell, issuing a futile,
almost biblical plea to a lover, "Ooh, take these things
from me." The studio tour de force "Half Day Closing",
stealthily modulates between fear and desire, employing
Aqua-manic sonar, moog, twang guitar, and vocals shirred
with space echo. The '60s-film-score-inspired "All Mine"
recalls the anxiety of Bertolucci's Il Conformista,
with Gibbons jumping to jarring pitches usually reserved
for violently sawed violins. "Humming" is another
exquisitely cinematic treatment, and there's nothing like
the suggestion of a camera to augment the stalkerine intensity
of Gibbon's gaze. With the edgy creep of the cobra from
Rikki Tikki Tavi, Gibbons intimates, "If you felt
as I, would you betray? You can't deny how I feel.
And you can't decide for me."
Appropriate to our nervy
age of surveillance, neither Dusty nor Portishead has
much respect for your personal space. They confront,
pervade, seep, and clutch. Bet you had no idea you were
so lovable.
Laura Sinagra