Tricky

Tricky saw the future on his first two albums: With 1995's Maxinquaye, he played foster
father to a freshly hatched brat called trip-hop; on his follow-up, 1996's Pre-Millennium
Tension, he created a fractured, transgenre masterpiece, Now, on his third solo album, the
sonic auteur turns to his past. Like its predecessors, Angels With Dirty Faces revolves
around montages: Spooky, hollowed-out blues riffs serve as disjunctive counter... More >

"Mellow" might have been recorded in a shipyard--augmenting Jack Hersca's nagging if fetching guitar and Gene Lake's steady if seething drums is a rhythm element that suggests a boat whistle heard across a moonless harbor. Next track the artist makes his pop bid with a catchy femme-chorus refrain and a guest star: Polly Jean Harvey, what a draw! For another three songs, a decent level of musical amenity is maintained: Martina's crooning tale of woe underpinned by low-register guitar/keyb riffs of unspecified origin and Calvin Weston's free drumming, three-note distorto hook beneath Tricky's speed-mumble, xylophonish tinkle countered by a keyb belch like an engine that won't catch. Thereafter the residues of grimy technologies settle into permanent low-level disorder: foghorns lowing, brakes complaining, clocks sounding across windswept nights, locomotives struggling uphill. He's a hater not a fighter, and the devil is in his details. So give that man a set of horns--he's earned them. (Grade: A-)