A kung fu fighter in a disco

Seriously though, can somebody explain the whole Portishead phenomenon this year to me? Is it that people actually think they've gotten better over time? Or are they just being cut slack (Metallica or Guns N Roses style but apparently more so) for, like, "hanging in there"? Which would maybe make them a sort of Gen X version of a Heritiage Artist (like also, say, Nick Cave, who U.S. critics basically didn't care *at all* about for the first two decades of his career, but now he's mysteriously somehow a shoo-in for polls like this.) (So okay, wanna know what would be cool? I didn't even think their '08 album was all that great, but what if AC/DC suddenly made *their* Pazz & Jop debut this year, after almost three and a half decades? Top 40 isn't out of the question, right?)