Portishead's first studio album in eleven years, Third moved away from the trip hop style they had popularised, incorporating influences such as krautrock, surf rock, doo wop and the film soundtracks of John Carpenter.

They were inspired to create again after producing with the band the Coral, and restarted work with the singer, Beth Gibbons, in Bristol, England.

[2] In 1998, following three years of tours and a divorce, the drummer and songwriter Geoff Barrow put Portishead on hiatus and went to Australia.

[3] In 2003, Barrow wrote "Magic Doors", which he described as "an opening ... then we ended up going back and forth, hating everything and then liking everything, and we had to decide whether to carry on.

Inspired by a Wiccan theory about the number three, Portishead wrote a "manifesto", had it translated into Portuguese, then recreated the sample with the new words to introduce the album.

[10] Gareth Grundy of Q wrote that "Third's sole link with the past is Gibbons' voice ... Everything else has been binned, the hip hop, the cinematic feel, the lot.

[14] The AV Club wrote that Gibbons "sounds more hollowed-out and harrowed than ever, a human nervous twitch on too much coffee and too little sleep".

[15] "We Carry On" has a "claustrophobic" two-note electro riff; Rolling Stone likened it to the work of the American psychedelic band Silver Apples.

[13] "Machine Gun" is driven by a "mechanical" rhythm that gives way to synthesisers which Drowned in Sound likened to the soundtracks of the 1980s films The Terminator and Blade Runner.

[18] On 8 and 9 December 2007, Portishead curated the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, England, and performed their first full sets in nearly 10 years, including tracks from Third.

[24] In his review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said Third was "genuinely, startlingly original" and "utterly riveting and endlessly absorbing".

Club's Michaelangelo Matos wrote that "nearly every track provides some little sonic goody midway through as a reward for continued attention after all these years.

"[10] Reviewing Third for Drowned in Sound, Nick Southall wrote that "several individual songs drift by almost unnoticed at first, contributing little more than a sense of unease to the collective memory of the album; an impression of oppression.

"[13] Louis Pattison of NME wrote that Third was "adventurous, sometimes dauntingly so – but seldom anything less than compelling" and said it was Portishead's best album.

[29] Pitchfork's Nate Patrin named Third the week's "best new music", writing that it was "a staggering transformation and a return to form that was never lost, an ideal adaptation by a group that many people didn't know they needed to hear again".

[11] Gareth Grundy of Q gave it three out of five and was disappointed that Portishead had moved away from their earlier sound, writing: "Third will probably be more admired than listened to ...

[37] All tracks are written by Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and Adrian Utley except where noted ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.