This
Week's Album Releases
The
Independent
Andy
Gill
Given
the way some critics bent over backwards to continue lavishing praise on
his
Increasingly
dismal albums, it's hardly surprising that Tricky grew to regard music
industry with such contempt. No matter how rubbish he was, he still got
the chance to make another record- and no matter how rubbish that was,
he still got praised for his "dark vision", or some such. By 1999's dreary,
Juxtapose, Tricky seemed a spent force, so reliant on the contribution
of collaborators DJ Muggs and Grease that they received full artist credit
alongside himself.
It was, he acknowledges, a psychological problem, "I was making records
deliberately so they wouldn't get on the radio," he reveals in the press
release for his latest album, To what, then, can we ascribe his return
to form on Blowback, which Tricky himself admits is the record he should
have made to follow up Maxinquaye? To his diet, apparently; after years
of paranoia and Prozac, a doctor diagnosed a rare food-related psychological
condition and described certain dietary prohibitions that ultimately eliminated
his paranoia and depression.
The
results speak for themselves: Blowback is so much more open and involving
than any of the albums following his pioneering debut that it's as if he
had an operation (an antipathectomy perhaps?) to let his hitherto repressed
better side flow freely for the first time.
He's still fond of collaborations, but the weight no longer rests mostly
on his guest's shoulders. He even manages to make Alanis Morissette palatable
on the opening track, "Excess;" whose cool, cantering rhythm owes little
to any contemporary dance floor beat. Various Red Hot Chili Peppers sit
in on "#1 Da Woman" (Eighties US rawk meets Nineties Tricky whisper) and
"Girls" (rap-metal that's old enough to shave), while the most striking
piece on the album, "Five days," features Cyndi Lauper singing like Kate
Bush over Tricky's cello and electric-piano pow-pow shuffle. Here, for
the first time in ages, Tricky rediscovers how to be menacing without actively
repelling.
Likewise, on "Song for Yukiko," he manages to evoke that whole Mishima/Oshima
erotic pain thing through just a few revealing links and an elegant, minimal
backing-track-not so much an Empire of the Senses as a small protectorate
perhaps. Tricky's main vocal cohorts throughout the album are his Bronx
raga chatting chum Hawkman and chanteuse Amber Sunshower, whose high-register
sweetness applies balm to Tricky's gruff mutterings.
Just as important in the overall scheme of things, though, are American
mix specialists Tom Lord-Alge and Jack Joseph Puig, whose skills at maximizing
the appeal of Tricky's sound.
from
ANTI |