| YOU EXPECT A FEW UNKIND words from musidans whose work
you've felt the need to criticise. But when Tricky publicly fantasised
about "putting him [me] in the boot of a car and shooting his [my] face"
in April after I'd interviewed him for a FACE cover story, it wasn't because
of anything I'd said about the music. His contention was that I'd sailed
too close to the paranoid wind of his personal life; easily done apparently
- he's fallen out with at least three of his collaborators this year. But
yes, I had intruded. To listen to "Maxinquaye" and "Nearly God" was to
intrude. To listen to his new LP "Pre-Millennium Tension" is doubly to
intrude. Tricky is much like the self-loathing criminal who secretly wants
to get caught: he invites listeners into his world, then despises them
afterwards for all that they know. Everything in his universe appears shrouded
in ambivalence, in a way that it surely would be for most of us if we were
braver and more honest. This is what makes Tricky's music so fascinating.
He is a lightning rod for our own fear, insecurity, ecstasy, guilt. Like
"Maxinquaye", "Tension" has its own distinctive sound, as though it was
conceived as a beautifully bruised whole in the same split second. There
is very little concession to pop melody this time, but the album's sparse,
uncluttered approach is just as compelling as that of its predecessor.
Tricky has made a negatively charged, whispered threat of an ambient record.
A step on. How durable it will prove to be is hard to know, but you really
wouldn't want to miss hearing it.
Andrew Smith
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