The classic debut Portishead album from 1994. The collaboration of studio whiz Geoff Barrow and singer Beth Gibbons, Dummy was made at the same time as a short film noir called To Kill a Dead Man, and the same approach - gloomy, tormented, and wildly melodramatic - permeates the album. 'sour times' (the hit in which gibbons cries, again and again, "nobody loves me, it's true") and the more cryptic Glory Box are the lynchpins of the album, defining its sound: dark flashes of old soul and film music, dehumanized electronic bleeps, Gibbons emoting like she's consumed by shame, and a bass-and-beat pulse derived from the slow bump and grind of the Bristol scene that spawned barrow's old collaborators, Massive Attack.
Tracklisting
A1 Mysterons
A2 Sour Times
A3 Strangers
A4 It Could Be Sweet
A5 Wandering Star
B1 Numb
B2 Roads
B3 Pedestal
B4 Biscuit
B5 Glory Box
