While the Coldplay crew might be hopping aboard the free-music train this summer, fellow U.K. musicians Portishead will be too busy heating their swimming pools to give away their new album.

Chris Martin isn’t be the first person we would expect to give away an album for free, but the Coldplay front man announced that the band is working out plans to give away a free live album to fans who attend their shows this summer. “We are trying to work out a way that, when you hand your ticket in at the door, you get given the recording,” said Martin. “It would be such a cool thing to do.” Martin noted that during this recession, giving the live album to fans for free would be  a gift. Thanks Chris, for thinking of us little people in such times of economic hardship. You’re a real pal.

Portishead on the other hand, is not so economically conscious of the little guy, and instead is taking a polar opposite stance to their oh-so-generous, fellow Brits Coldplay. The band, who is currently free of any sort of recording contract, said they have lots of options for releasing their upcoming record, but it is very unlikely for them to release it for free.

“I don’t think that we’re into giving out music away for free to be honest.” said Geoff Barrow, on the band’s MySpace blog. “It fuckin’ takes ages to write, and we have to heat our swimming pools!”

We’ll see how warm Portishead’s swimming pools get when fans inevitably end up illegally downloading the album off the internet for free.

As previously mentioned, the criteria for our best of 2008 is the accumulated average of our writers and contributors picks. And few chose Third as their absolute favorite, it showed up on more lists than any other record of 2008.

Almost ironically, in a year dominated by beard-folk and synth club bands, Portishead returned with a sound as relevant as anyone. A testament to their innovation, longevity and the fact they were already ahead of the curve when they formed almost two decades ago.

Island

As if we needed another reason to look forward to 2009, Portishead’s Geoff Barrow told BBC Radio’s 6 Music DJ Nemone this week that the band is on track to record a new album in the new year.

This spring saw the release of Third, fittingly their third studio album. Barrow told Nemone that it took the band a while to decide whether to record again or not. “We just didn’t want to repeat ourselves again really, there’s no real point,” he said. “We’d actually prefer to stop altogether if we were just going to roll out the old kinda sound really.”

It seems that rolling out the same old stuff is definitely not the plan, and Barrow said they’ve even determined a direction for the new album, and that the whole band seems “really positive” about it. “When everyone’s had a bit of a break, I think we’re just going to plough into it,” he said.

The band is also looking to spend quite a bit of 2009 outside the confines of the studio. “I think everybody at some point wants to get back out on the road, because we didn’t really do an awful lot of live stuff,” Barrow said.

The interview with 6 Music followed up on an exclusive recording session the band did for BBC Radio, featuring unique versions of four tracks from Third. The full interview as well as the tracks are available through BBC 6 Music all week.

Barrow’s said the possibilities for a new album are endless, and fans might be surprised with what hits stores next year.

What’s really interesting is that we’re in this lucky position now. We haven’t got a record company; our deal ended and so did our publishing deal. So we pretty much own all of our own rights now, which is scary as well as exciting really, so we’re thinking of loads of different ways of doing things.