There are not all that many pop albums that enchant me on first hearing. Portishead's first album, Dummy was one. It conditioned me to have an immediately positive response to any music described as trip-hop.
I didn't hear this second album until some years later–this was pre-streaming and I had to buy the CD. When I did, I didn't like it as much and thought of it as like Dummy but not quite as good, and really didn't give it much of a chance. I listened to it again recently though and now I think that my preference for Dummy may just be a matter of which one I heard first. At any rate this one is really good.
One mild negative that crossed my mind while listening to Portishead is that Beth Gibbons's vocal mannerisms sometimes seem to be excessive. And perhaps the songs are by a very small margin not quite as good. Or maybe it's that one or two of my favorites on Dummy (like "Wandering Star") appeal to me more than anything here. Anyway, I see that AllMusic gives Dummy five stars, and Portishead four and a half. I haven't heard Dummy for a while but I think I would concur. I haven't heard their only other studio album, Third, at all.
This song, "Only You," is as good a representative of the album as any. The scratching was the one thing about the Portishead sound that I didn't like when I first heard it, but now it seems, weirdly, to be an effective part of the atmosphere. You could say that atmosphere is what Portishead is all about, but that would miss their brilliance.
About scratching, by the way: it took me a long time to get over being appalled by the mistreatment of the records and equipment involved. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see this Wikipedia article.
Light On Dark Water 
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