Wow, the month is really half over.  Good thing I’m so decisive,  cause uh…it didn’t, y’know take me two weeks to finally come to the conclusion that though Ratatat’s LP3 is an incredible record, it’s not quite album of the year material, despite it’s gorgeous cover art, or the music being forever being linked with my time hiking through France.  Or accepting that Vampire Weekend’s self-titled LP  (my ‘walk into any store and pick it up’ choice as eluded to in my previous post), as much as I love that album to death, still wasn’t the record that wholly rocked my socks all the way to Bristol and back in 2008.

Portishead could have done a million things with Third. They could’ve played it safe, could’ve done the expected, and could’ve played by anybody else’s rules.  Instead they just waited, recorded and released the brilliant record that I don’t think anybody really saw coming.

I first heard the song The Rip, which is still probably my favourite track, when I was doing the washing-up in my flat in Newmarket.  There was some Radiohead thing on the radio, Thom Yorke guesting on BBC Radio 1 or something, and he had a CD-r copy of the single, had asked Portishead for permission, and played it before anybody else had really heard it.  I remember thinking something along the lines of “wow, this may not be the intelligent-make-out-session soundtrack of Dummy, but it’s pure awesome.”  I had a chance to pre-order the box set with all of its goodies, and yeah, when it arrived I was a happy pappy.  Andrea recalls the unboxing ceremony as well as I do I’m sure! It’s only about 15 feet away from me right now, but it’s in an unknown box buried under countless other boxes, so I won’t be able to pop in my ‘P’-shaped USB stick to copy the album onto the MBP, but I’ve been listening to it on my Zune all month…the verdict?  A+…would buy again!  So I found someone on eBay selling a regular-edition vinyl copy, and decided what the heck…also I’m continuing a tradition started last month, but I’ll have more on that when the package arrives.

As for my as-yet-unpurchased pick of 1986 – anybody got any guesses?  I’ve heard The Rolling Stones and Billy Idol, and of course Depeche Mode, but so far nobody’s picked the winner…