It's almost impossible, at least for me, not to love a band that has only recorded three albums in 19 years in this day and age of hard sell, and true to form each album is a tour de force. Never mind when Portishead played Glastonbury last week — a band that can go on hiatus and do solo work elsewhere for 5 years (for Gibbons = Rustin Man etc) — it was the band's lead singer Beth Gibbons who stole all the shows, when on their closing number she ran off the stage to spend some time hugging and touching the crowd all along the barricaded front row. Nice touch — reach over the barricade. No one losing a beat from that electrified and screen pulsing stage. And was it me, or did you also feel the surging crowd, in pitch outdoor darkness, come all that much closer to the band? Before leaving the stage Gibbons said, with sincerity, to the soothing sea of trip-hop devotees, "Thank you so much ... I hope it was all right."
