Blue Lines - Massive Attack

Track list:

1. Safe From Harm
2. One Love
3. Blue Lines
4. Be Thankful For What You've Got
5. Five Man Army
6. Unfinished Sympathy
7. Daydreaming
8. Lately
9. Hymn Of The Big Wheel

Running time: 45 minutes
Released: 1991

Ten years ago this would definitely have been tagged as a favourite. Now I'm not so certain. I pretty much guarantee I'll love it, but it isn't a disc I return to often. I have the original, not the remastered version and I think that I got into this through my brother - not unusual way back when; though he is younger than me he bought more music than I when we were in our teens. To think this is almost 25 years old now... its a true classic, but how does it listen this much later?

Two full albums in a day... I could be listening to this year's Mercury winner (which I need to do some point soon having picked it up, and it being an A), but the only reason I am doing this post now is that I want to hear these tunes.

The bass riff that forms the structure of Safe From Harm is iconic, Shara Nelson's vocal is amazing. Talk about setting a tone in the first 30 seconds. The periphery of the bass is incidental. There's stuff there but that riff is so strong. I have the disc of the samples that inspired Massive Attack somewhere in the future so that I can appreciate the source but there is no doubt at all that this stands as a shining example of how to sample and enhance. At 5 minutes the track feels short, compared with the tunes I listened to earlier which overstayed their welcome. I really should tag this "favourites" after all so I have. It only took 10 seconds to convince me.

Horace Andy appears for the first time on One Love. It never ceases to amaze me how many Massive Attack tunes are made or broken by this man. Either by the application of his vocal, or by virtue of being re-imaginings of songs from his past. There is a cool menace in the track here, and that combination of words is not a natural one. It's funny what the slightly tipsy brain will produce. In addition to wanting, and indulging, to listen to this now, I have a) just watched ep. 3 of London Spy - some very nice scenes - and seen trails for Luther and Line of Duty, two shows I am very pleased will reappear on screen soon. It's been a good evening in that regard.

Blue Lines sees us exposed to early Tricky for the first time, less angry here than on his own stuff. The interplay between the vocalists is nice, backed by a very chilled rhythm. Its a style that is really hard to deliver well - there is almost nothing to it in places. Many imitators since have failed to pull off the heady blend... just recently I branded Abraham lazy and faddish for their light-touch downbeat electronica. This is how to achieve that chillout goal whilst still being engaging. Do it first.

The sweet transition into Be Thankful for What You've Got is a magical moment. It's born from a pointed end to Blue Lines, and the immediate uptake of a rhythm so funky its not funny. Like much of the work that covers Horace Andy, this is not sample so much as cover, which I had never really appreciated. The original is on Protected so I'll compare and contrast in, I dunno, a decade? I am sure I've said on these pages before that I went to uni in Bristol, and in my first year there, after Massive Attack released Mezzanine I stayed late in the run-up to Christmas to see these guys play the Student Union. It remains a fond, if faded, memory. Later, when I was studying in Bath, I used to travel over to Bristol every week to game. On my way from station to location I walked through the parts of the city that spawned the Bristol Sound, and in that way you do, you think you see local celebs from time to time. Don't know if I ever really did though. Thought I saw Beth Gibbons of Portishead in a sandwich shop once too. Hah.

Five Man army comes and goes, a nice groove but really just a fill-in before the undoubted high point of Unfinished Sympathy. This really is a modern classic, a truly iconic tune in more ways than one. I get goose pimples as it starts, that off-kilter tapping, not quite tuneful bells and the sampled "hey hey hey hey". It is the start of the strings and the vocal that really set things moving though. Nelson's voice creams it, soulful and yearning, the strings speaking to loss. There is one moment at 2:24, when the piano comes in for a quick bridge that I always loved. It has less impact now, perhaps because I was so anticipating it. It's amazing the interplay between the percussion, which is tense and snappy, and the tune which is laid back and easy. They bottled something and released it here. 

Daydreaming has never really worked for me - as a concept or a song. The backing track just doesn't quite do it for me. Here the rhythm of it gets overpowering, a loop too far in terms of its impact on the experience for me... its very easy to get sucked into that beat pattern and miss everything else, which is what happened to me just now. Lately changed it up and I suddenly snapped out of a wander. This has the same problem of an over-bearing central hook, but manages it better through strings and another Nelson vocal which follows the pattern of the rhythm in an interesting way.

The album ends with another high point. The Hymn of the Big Wheel is just a gorgeous little rhythm behind a very simple tune, but it owes all of its magic to Horace Andy's vocal. Man, I love the way he sings this. All love, released; free. In truth, re-tagging it as a favourite is probably a bit of a push. There are to my mind four stand out songs on this disc: Safe From Harm, Be Thankful... Unfinished Sympathy and this. It's less than half of the album, but these tunes are timelessly good and elevate an enjoyable if somewhat surpassed effort to something that few discs can really claim to match: genre definition.

Blowback - Tricky

Tracklist:

1. Excess
2. Evolution Revolution Love
3. Over Me
4. Girls
5. You Don't Wanna
6. #1 Da Woman
7. Your Name
8. Diss Never (Dig Up We History)
9. Bury The Evidence
10. Something in the Way
11. Five Days
12. Give it to 'Em
13. A Song for Yukiko

Running time: 50 minutes
Released: 2001

I doubt I will like this much. I didn't get on with Angels with Dirty Faces to the point where I excised the whole disc from my library. Whilst I am not sure that Blowback will get quite such short shrift, I do think it will contain a fair amount that is not for me, and that Tricky's output in general leans that way. Pity I have at least a couple more albums in the tank if so. Still, one can hope to be surprised.

The opening of Excess has a nice roll to it, a consistent rumble, and after the first exploratory vocals there is a small flash of augmentation to that, keys providing a melodic touch, which builds a rather pleasant and accessible track. Not what I was expecting. Of course, I have a problem with it. There is a little too little of the melody, and the track elongates and stays beyond its welcome - not by introducing anything unpleasant but by simply not introducing anything new to the picture. A shame, it could have been much better.

OK, so I recognise Evolution Revolution Love when it starts. For some reason I thought this tune was on a different album. The track is, again, accessible in a way I didn't find anything on Angels. The chorus is the bit that sticks in the memory, but it is the variation in vocal styles applied throughout the piece that makes it work. Like Excess there isn't a whole lot of change or variation in the music here, but switching between a few different deliveries keeps the track a fair bit fresher. You could probably knock 30-40 seconds of its length without noticing it, but I actually think it works all the same.

I don't get on so well with the vocal styling on Over Me. This is a duet of sorts between a very... something low bassy vocal and a waifish female voice doing the chorus. How to describe that male voice? I can't begin to find words. Whilst not a million miles away from one of the approaches on the prior track, here it just grates, and the backing remains pretty staid. Nothing to grab my attention. I am therefore glad when Girls introduces a nice rocky guitar riff. Tricky's angry lyric suits this style, but the more traditional rock vocal that joins/forms backing at some point is a bit feeble. Still, the track is rather catchy up until the point the hook gets old. To be fair as that point slips by the structure of the track does change up a little, but the switch is temporary and too short. At 3 minutes the track feels like it has gone for 5 and by the time it ends (4:21) it feels more like a lifetime. A pity - because I rather enjoyed the lead vocal here.

I'm sorry, I can't get past the altered sample of "Sweet Dreams" in You Don't Wanna. I find it fails to work, and worse than that there are points where the vocal harmonies applied over it are dissonant to my ear, and the lead vocal line is affected and hard to like at the best of times. Not for me. This is the first track that has been a complete flop though, and I feel comfortable declaring this a more easily approached record than the previous listen. Apparently the next track is chock full of Red Hot Chilli Peppers; whatever. It feels bland and boring whenever it isn't Tricky's rasping voice in play, and even then the backing is dull. The weirdness continues when we move on to something based around "Under the Bamboo Tree". It maintains the rhythm of the inspiration and feels really out of place here, light, weightless and plastic - a world away from the interest in the disc which largely resides in the darker parts.

Having said that the next track provides interest in a more positive way. I don't much like the vocal on Diss Never but the way the chorus opens up musically is rather appealing, and there is nothing dark about the feel to this track. That said, I am more engaged when the threat and tension return. I find that Tricky's ear for a good riff is evident here and he has the rasp to really compliment a strong rocky guitar well. Alas what seems to be lacking on Blowback is much in the way of changing up those riffs so that they don't get over repetitive. Either that or the brevity needed to keep tunes to a length that would prevent boredom with the looping. Maybe I've just got a short attention span this evening, though - after all, he's the successful musician. I'll gloss over the bad Nirvana cover (I wouldn't have known but for the album's entry in Wikipedia) as I am not familiar with the original and frankly there is no interest for me in this track anyway. Then the novelty of hearing the voice behind Girls Just Want to Have Fun on a dark track. Sure, Cyndi Lauper is more than that one song, but I'm damned if I know her from anything else. This track is just dull, no life in the rhythm, no life in the duet, no melody at all and far too much repetition, not just in the loops and percussion but also in the lyrics. It feels like it lasts the period described in the title.

Two tracks to go and my overall impression has gone from surprised and positive early on to pretty flatly bored and negative near the end. Flat is probably the best single-work description that I can offer. The early tracks aside there is very little here that lifts any of the tracks above background noise, and when there is, those tracks quickly become flat from lack of variation. This post must read likewise, seeing as it is constantly covering the same theme - and to avoid doing that any further I have nothing more to say about the closing.

The Best Kept Secrets: The Best of Lamb 1996-2004 - Lamb

Track list:

1. Cotton Wool
2. God Bless
3. Gold
4. Gorecki
5. Little Things
6. B Line
7. Lullaby
8. Bonfire
9. Heaven
10. One
11. Gabriel
12. Angelica
13. Til The Clouds Clear
14. Wonder
15. Please
16. Stronger

Running time: 71 minutes
Released: 2004

Lamb. Not sure why I have this... probably led to it via other "trip-hoppy" groups. Lamb were never a group I was abreast of when they were current and I have never really listened to this after acquiring it so whilst I have a reasonable idea of what sort of thing this disc contains, I am far from familiar with any of its contents. Depressingly it runs to over an hour, which means it is probably too long since my last post. If not, consider this more evidence of how I prepare the content for this backwater.

...

I wrote the paragraph above as I was setting up this post, immediately on finishing the last one.I predicted a long gap but even I didn't expect a whole month. June was a disaster of small things mounting up, and the early part of July has been dominated by recovering from finally sorting those things out. Hopefully I can establish some kind of rhythm again, though with the Ashes on radio to dominate my listening and a frankly poor run of things to get through before the interesting albums start again I have a degree of self-doubt there. Anyway, enough babbling and whinging, get on with it Graham!

We start with a dingy hook and a light vocal piercing the darkly reverberating space it leaves. I know none of these tracks, so this is a voyage of discovery as well as an attempt to kickstart the stalled project. Structure of electronically produced percussion is added, but the vocal is left to carry the tune on its own for the most part. It's a very odd introduction but not unwelcome. There is something trance-inducing about the percussive edge and darkly swirling sounds melded with it. Not brilliant or inspired, just a bit different and interesting in a way that, say Tricky's Angels With Dirty Faces was not for me. It loses my interest at the end of Cotton Wool by adding fairground-like pipes; ugh. I think the thing this most reminds me of, as God Bless begins, is the tracks that Sinead O'Connor recorded with Massive Attack on 100th Window. Whilst I would not say anything here is as accomplished as Massive Attack at their best, they probably do provide the best touchstone. Lamb are a little more pared back and stripped down though.

My feeling is that these two opening tracks have both been a little too long for their own good, and a glance at the player confirms they are both 5+ minutes, giving plenty of time to get a bit stale despite having reasonably solid core themes and ideas. I particularly like the vocal, much lighter than I was expecting, soft edges rather than a harder tone, and this contrasts the often very stark backing. These tracks are crafted to showcase the vocal component in places and do so effectively. I am not completely sold on the composition and arrangements yet.

Gold continues the trend of being just too long and - frankly - a bit too samey. Now we hit Gorecki, which a quick search indicates is their "signature". Backing of softly applied strings creates a crucible for the singing early on, overworked percussion joining to smear the contrast later. The piece does not work for me... too similar, nothing standing out, same faults at the prior tracks. I feel like I am still on the start line with this listen. The main problem is that whilst the sparse arrangements were interesting up front, there really isn't any long term engagement there, I can find more interesting programming elsewhere. I will say I love the singing but other than that? Patience wearing thin. At least the tracks get a bit shorter from here... hopefully punchier and more memorable too.

Ah, Little Things is familiar - more urgent, a more understandable percussive form to it. Fast, immediate and grungy. As a mood piece, very nice threat and edge to it. Not a comfortable listen but all the better for that. The central section, which drops the voice, is a little bland but without it the skittishness would not be quite the same. The jump into B Line is ugly - the start of the new piece really leaving a lot to be desired and just when I thought it might be getting better it devolves into a sonic mess, a pattern that unfortunately repeats again within the same track.

So far this is not creating a positive impression; I am left with the thought that if this is their best of then what was the main corpus of their work like?!

Lullaby is braver, better. Stepping away from mediocre beats that override as much or more than they support. Instead we have the voice sitting in a well of orchestral strings, the singing bringing the darkness along with a hint of bass line. Maybe this marks a swing in the pieces, as Bonfire seems to be a step in a similar direction, a slight dissonance with the echoing vocal, twice recorded, and atmosphere and tension building. Strings and piano taking over the accompaniment from clicks, whirrs and beats. My complaint, because I have to have one, is that lyrically it is rubbish, losing a lot of the impression that the voice makes to inanity. Shame really, I can see so much that is right in here, but the results seem to be dominated by the bits that are wrong.

I am only half way through. My stamina for this is waning - I have not sat at these keys trying to concertedly type for this long in a while... other than writing up my ongoing Albion game when sessions happen, but that has been as affected by recent events as this blog - not having the mental energy to approach writing up the material amidst a need to keel over after getting in the door. I digress because it feels like Lamb have, too. Heaven sounds like it should have been done by someone else - too light, too floaty - it does not fit with what has been, and does not address my problems with what I have been hearing.

The dark tone comes back with One, and is welcome. I have a fondness for slightly grubby sounds that evoke shady back alley deals, conflicts barely held back and danger in every shadow. I think it appeals to the gamer in me as the dirty darkness is pregnant with potential drama. Alas I am not convinced that there is enough to this to make good use of those themes. Just a little too... repetitive? Maybe. Too derivative? Well what isn't? Hard to put my finger on it. Gabriel, like Heaven ditches that tone and as a result sounds like a thousand and one other songs that I cannot name and have no desire to listen to again. Bland, not bad, everything it does done better somewhere else by someone else.

Is this best of really that bad? Probably not. I think in other circumstances, perhaps in the context of the original albums, I might have had a more positive response to Lamb. Angelica sounds awfully familiar... must be the Debussy sample that has been used elsewhere. Actually I think this track really works, uses the sample well.

The tone definitely seems to have shifted. In place of the darkness and electronica now we have light acoustic ballads? OK then. Musically it is plodding, unpromising to start, but interesting when the thrusting percussion appears unexpectedly... the only constant seems to be the pleasant singing voice. Veering from bland and boring to over-stimulation would work better for me if the two poles were placed slightly closer together. Contrast is good, but this feels more like a bait and switch than a coherent whole.

Wonder reminds me of How Do from Becoming X, so similar is the structure, the lightness and indeed the contrast with most of the rest of the album the song is being consumed with. Its not as good as the Sneaker Pimps track to my mind, and I really don't need both of them. Wonder just feels a little bland somehow.

I am glad to be winding down this listen, less glad to have had my fears for it be proved true. A couple of tracks will be held on to but the majority are for the bin. I really must sort out a better writing position if I am going to keep going with this (and that is still the plan, despite the long hiatus) as my back is aching an hour into this listen. I don't know what to do about that because it's just so convenient having a laptop on my coffee table for general use.

As for the remaining tracks... Please is just dull, bland. Stronger, which will end this post starts promisingly but ultimately does not grow as it could. The electro-funk bass which kicks in for the final third feels like it has warped in from a completely different genre but does at least bring a little more depth and so, maybe, just rescues the song from the precipice of disappointment.

Overall? Yeah, this does not do it for me. Couple of highlights, but mostly chaff. I found the transition in style over the course of the album interesting, suggesting that tracks were arranged chronologically to some degree, and there were good points - be they specific ideas, good use of vocal or whatever - scattered around the various tracks. Overall, though, it just lacks something intangible, never quite up to enough to make it stand out or to raise Lamb to the bar set by their contemporaries or genre neighbours.

Angels With Dirty Faces - Tricky

Track List:

1. Money Greedy
2. Mellow
3. Singing the Blues
4. Broken Homes
5. 6 Minutes
6. Analyze Me
7. The Moment I Feared
8. Talk to Me (Angels with Dirty Faces)
9. Carriage for Two
10. Demise
11. Tear out My Eyes
12. Record Companies
13. Peyote Sings
14. Taxi

Running time: 59 minutes
Released: 1998

Massive Attack have already appeared in this project; this album is from an alumnus of the same scene in Bristol. My first exposure to Tricky was unknowingly through Massive Attack; the first exposure I actually recall was not much liking the video for Makes Me Wanna Die... That said the video I can find online for that song doesn't match the one in my memory, so it is probably another track I am thinking of, even if none of the titles seem right for the memory. 

I somehow missed his earlier solo work, but picked it up later after moving to Bristol for uni. None of the track titles here jump out at me with recognition, and before googling to grab the track list (you don't think I type them all out each time do you?) I had no idea that PJ Harvey appeared on any of his material. So despite owning this, I am pretty ignorant of it. Time to change that.

OK, the first thing I notice is a lot of disruption of the sound. Not sure whether this is a deliberate decision in the creation of the track or an artefact of preparation and presentation. It is most audible in Tricky's voice on Money Greedy; the song itself I find lacking, a dull riff/rhythm combo and not much else of note going on for a whole 5 minutes. The same problem affects Mellow - the music on the track just does nothing to excite me. The whispered, husky vocal is interesting (if indistinct), and provides a USP for the tune, but it is not enough in and of itself to sustain interest.

Singing the Blues is the third track in a row that gives me the same problem. The groove, the hook, the beats - that is pretty much all there is to these tracks, no melody at all. That is not a problem if those things are stellar, but what I am hearing falls short. Repetitive, too consistent, ultimately boring rather than unpleasant. I hope for an upturn as the album moves along but a strong pattern would need to be broken for that to happen. Even PJ Harvey's tones cannot snap me out of the drudgery - her vocal on Broken Homes is within the range of what you might expect but it is saddled with the same uninspired backing, only lightened in places by a harmonic backing vocal. I could simply not be in the mood for dirt and grime, but more pertinently I think what I am hearing is more a child of its time and has not aged well.

Aha, a more interesting track? Maybe. Tricky brings his familiar vocal style to a party with a faster beat. Unfortunately the track is still lacking anything else for these to play off against and so 6 minutes also falls flat for me: the rhythmic pattern can only sustain interest so far. I doubt at this point that I will be keeping any track from the album. Half way through and not even green shoots of change, of any extra depth to the tracks. It just hit me that this is drum'n'bass-like, but with the bass recorded low enough to be barely audible over the drums, and both parts relying far too heavily on a single loop. I am sure there is a lot more depth here than I am giving it credit for, but I just cannot hear it, and the patterns are too dull to draw me in.

I have zoned out; droned out my brain by attending to other things. There is little here of interest to the modern me. The last two tracks are listed as "bonus" numbers, but they feel like penalties. In truth, I doubt I ever listened to these tunes much even when I picked the album up and I will not miss them. I feel like what is here... well, it sounds like the top half of every song was simply forgotten, not recorded, not mixed. Some of the percussion/bass interplay is reasonably good and if there was almost anything else going on over it the songs could be transformed to my ear. Alas, that was not there and my last hour has been pretty much an aural endurance trial as a result.

I acknowledge that I am not the target audience, that my need for a bit more going on over the base provided is my issue, not the artist's, but whilst I am no longer completely ignorant of this album, it was so much not to my taste that in some ways (like having the last hour back) I wish I was.