Tricky left Massive Attack, the Bristol collective who provided tbe soundtrack to many a shopping therapy expedition, and went on to make one of the greatest albums of the 1990s, Maxinquaye. He was never a purveyor of easy listening or trippy-hoppy background music. He delved much deeper, dredging through a family history of mixed race shenanigans, gangland violence and his own martyrdom as a victim of major respiratory and skin disease.
It’s been over 16 years since the first album came out, and Tricky claims he has returned to form with False Idols, after a number of rarely better than average releases. He is right – as there are moments when his trademark DIY approach to production, his instinct for surprising sounds and ability to mix styles in an unexpected way work very well – as on “Valentine”, a moody and sinister stroll through introspection, and “Parenthesis” which moves dramatically from the maximum vulnerability of a male falsetto to the crashing energy of metal-infused guitars.
In “Tribal Drums”, he steals (he’s not called Tricky for nothing) a rolling percussion riff from his former partners Massive Attack and overlays a delicately woven stream of weird sounds, that bring to mind the influence of one of his original mentors, the fierce avant-gardist Mark Stewart.
The whispered raps have slid from signature to near-cliché, as have the obligatory melancholy women’s vocals. It’s as if his mother’s suicide when he was just four hasn’t just haunted Tricky ever since, but held him in a web of addiction to the dark muse. He has a fine ear for good voices, and they speak well for his wounded soul. Exiled from Bristol – a place with too many traumatic memories, but the source of his initial inspiration – a Parisian Tricky feels all too often like he’s going through well-rehearsed motions rather than plumbing the abyss that made his early music so original and thrilling.
