Threads

Threads closes Third. Gibbons wrote its guitar line and played it straight into the computer, where it was chopped up in Logic. The bass, played by Jim Barr, runs three notes across four beats and keeps the song pushing forward. Clive Deamer played drums, Charlotte Nicholls cello and Will Gregory a soprano saxophone solo, and Barrow's shouted vocal went through Utley's Clavioline. Gibbons largely improvised the loud final section, and the ending piles whammy-bar and fuzz guitar onto a detuned EMS VCS3 that Utley likened to Hawkwind.

Barrow told The Guardian that about three years passed between writing the bassline and settling the chords, not out of perfectionism but in search of something elusive, and that the sessions were at times tense. Spin heard its simmering roar and final shriek as a fireball of fear. Utley has called it his favorite Portishead song to play live, both because it is so odd and because the guitar part was Gibbons's, not his.

Live

First played at Gordano School in Portishead on 1 December 2007, at a warm-up show, it has been performed 94 times by setlist.fm's count. It was played at Glastonbury in 2013 and closed the main set at Benicàssim on 19 July 2015, the band's last full concert to date. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version.