Pitchfork

The last time Portishead released a new album was the 1998 live disc PNYC. The last time Portishead released an album of new material was 1997's Portishead. So after nearly a decade, we're pretty desperate for something, anything, resembling news of a forthcoming album.

Well, we got some tiny scraps last week, when the Bristol trio updated its MySpace page with some straight up good news: "weve had our meeting with the label it was really positive...which makes the whole thing so much easier to deal with nice people," the blog said. "the tracks are in a right mess but sounding like a album for the first time in years." The music is described as "fukin a bit weird" before the band takes some potshots at artists with whom they're often RIYL'd. "its nice to think us old gits have a few tunes in us without sounding like coffee table zero 7 - moby - chill out shit!!"

Ooh, diss.

Group member Geoff Barrow launched more zingers on his own MySpace blog on Sunday, when he wrote that the band "should hire ‘dangermouse' he would knock up a portishead album in about a week and the kidz would dig it...it would sell buket loads...get damon alburn to sing on it...WICKED!!!!! DOPE...!!!! fuk em" Gorillaz probably shouldn't start working on a Portishead diss rap just yet, though, as it seems that Barrow was merely using them as a straw man for his frustrations with pop music in general. After all, the post was entitled "the day the music sucked" and he also said "some times i feel like im just fukin usless at this lark there just aint ever gonna be another fukin glory box...thank fuck we did one already"

Thank fuck indeed.