Portishead, Alien

This is the Bristol duo that almost singlehandedly invented the late-90s genre du jour, “trip-hop”—meaning atmospheric, heavily remixed club music that brought together elements of electronica, turntablism, rock ’n’ roll, film soundtrack, and torch song. You probably remember Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons best for “Sour Times,” a wonderful, sepia-toned single that hit the airwaves right around the time REV-105 went off the air forever. Their second, self-titled album was a mostly inaccessible mash of aural dementia, but the concert album PNYC was among the very best records of the 1990s. The five-year hiatus bodes well for this particular group: Either the world is ready for a trip-hop revival, or Portishead will again rewrite the rules of prerecorded pop music, or possibly both. Like a dog and a tin whistle, the ears of every critic in the country will be tuned to this one. Whether you should care about that, of course, remains an open question.