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Portishead: The Reluctant Debutante

Ben Thompson, Independent on Sunday, 11 December 1994

IF YOU WERE the most compelling and enigmatic new group in Britain, playing your first proper gig in the sort of London club where Christine Keeler used to strut her stuff, and you found out that Michael Hutchence of INXS had just walked in, what would you do? Get your friends to throw him out, that's what. Him and his supermodel companion: let them chew pavement. Portishead don't do this, though – that's not the kind of people they are ("He was on Later with us," says musical mastermind Geoff Barrow, "it was nice of him to come"). May they never have cause to regret such forbearance.

Total word count of piece: 1414

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