‘We Carry On’: The Portishead song made as a tribute to Silver Apples

Posted On October 2, 2024October 2, 2024

Since their early 1990s emergence, Portishead has released three albums, all of which have cemented them as one of Britain’s most innovative bands. As pioneers of the trip-hop genre, the group stood out compared to many of their contemporaries, working with obscure samples and influenced by early electronica.

After winning the Mercury Prize for their debut album, Dummy, the band released their second effort, Portishead, in 1997. Fans waited three years between the records, and as a result, Portishead delivered a flawless collection of songs, which bared their signature sound while further evoking a sense of cinematics.

However, the band wouldn’t release their next LP, Third, until 2008, and by this point, they were ready to move away from their trip-hop roots. The record still featured sounds and techniques that made them an acclaimed act in the first place, but they also leaned into other influences, like folk, as demonstrated on ‘Deep Water’ and krautrock.

The latter genre is particularly prevalent, with the first song on the album, ‘Silence’ maintaining a cyclical rhythm, while ‘Nylon Smile’ also features an unmistakable krautrock sound. The record gave us some of Portishead’s best songs, like ‘The Rip’, ‘Machine Gun’, and ‘We Carry On’, with the latter taking influence from early electronica pioneers Silver Apples, who paved the way for krautrock.

The band released their self-titled debut album in 1968, shortly before many krautrock bands would emerge and take a similar approach to Silver Apples. Formed by Simeon, the band used a synthesiser that he made himself and blended musique concréte techniques into a pop-inspired sonic landscape that was one of the earliest to use electronica outside of an experimental and academic environment.

Silver Apples never received enough credit, but they were hugely important to the development of electronica. They came before bands like Neu!, Can, and Kraftwerk, all of whom would become known as some of the biggest names in the krautrock genre. So, while these bands significantly inspired Portishead, the band paid direct homage to Silver Apples on ‘We Carry On’, which uses a whirring electronic sound to create a sense of intensity. Talking to Westword, Geoff Barrow explained how the band influenced ‘We Carry On’.

“I was introduced to Silver Apples by Adrian [Utley] from the band,” he explained. “When he first bought it, he actually thought it was modern, because it was just extraordinary.” Barrow then met Simeon, who “I was just hugely influenced by, and interested by, the way he had an amazing musical but non-musical ability about him — like tuning and the noises and the lack of ‘music’ proper. It was outer-space music, if you know what I mean.”

He continued: “It’s the kind of thing Public Enemy would have sampled. They most certainly did at some point, you know what I mean? Making punk music, but with folk, and the idea of a singer who is using traditional-sounding songs with these extraordinary jazz and electronic sounds. Three stylistically different pieces of music being shoehorned in such an incredible way. That’s what really interested me.”

In 2011, Portishead got Simeon up on stage with them at All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival to perform ‘We Carry On’, a testament to his influence over the band and that song specifically. 

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