"Sour Times" is a song by English trip hop group Portishead, from their debut album, Dummy (1994). It was written by all three members of the band and released as a single by Go! Beat Records in August 1994, accompanied by three bonus tracks: "It's a Fire", "Pedestal", and "Theme from To Kill a Dead Man". NME ranked it number 32 in their list of the 50 best songs of 1994. Slant Magazine placed it at number 77 in their ranking of "The 100 Best Singles of the 1990s" in 2011. Composition The song uses a sample from Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin's "Danube Incident", from the 1967 album, More Mission: Impossible. Portishead sped up the sample to a desired tempo which took Schifrin's arrangement up nearly a semitone, giving the song a dissonant kind of "hip-hop tuning”. Critical reception Dave Sholin from the Gavin Report described the song as a "moody, mysterious and haunting production." Chuck Campbell from Knoxville News Sentinel felt the "stalking" track is "a modern rock hit that could bloom into more for the English band, but the single's relative directness doesn't accurately reflect the more obscure path the group favors." In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton wrote, "Its the kind of gloriously understated piece of melancholia that is normally supposed to appeal to students but is actually far too good to be wasted solely on that market." Alan Jones from Music Week gave the song four out of five, adding, "Their first single, "Numb", was a non-starter, but Portishead make a quantum jump with this single. This is a melancholy, wistful and worthy successor to the widescreen meanderings of fellow Bristolians Massive Attack, with a soulful vocal and tense backing track that evokes Bond movies and Spaghetti Westerns in equal measure. A spinechiller, and a hit." Another editor, Andy Beevers, stated, "Hot on the heels of their critically acclaimed "Numb", the Bristol duo are re-releasing this single which first appeared as a very limited self-financed white label several months back. It is another moody downbeat tune featuring melancholy vocals, although it is a less leftfield and more complete song than "Numb"." James Hamilton from the RM Dance Update declared it as a "tremulous gentle girl sighed doodling atmospheric Twin Peaks/From Russia With Love-ish 94bpm pop swayer". Charles Aaron from Spin wrote, "Figures it would take two pale British hip-hop heads to finally dream up