Tricky To See Why He Bothered (Blowback - Tricky)

Member Name: dazza_london

Product:	Blowback - Tricky
Date:	24/07/01 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A Death in the Family Will Seem Like Child's Play Compared to Listening to This, Maybe This is a One-off, If not - He Might Die Soon

Disadvantages: Its Existence, His Belief that this was a Suitable Album to Release, Tunred me Into a Raving Ranter

The bitter irony. Whilst flicking through the new items list, I happened upon this, Tricky's latest album - a review which will damn near break my heart to write. Imagine the pain of one of his biggest fans forcing himself to write a review of his idol's weakest album to date. If someone asked me what Blowback was like, I might feel compelled to respond in a Wayne-esque manner and reply, "Well, it certainly does blow,", accompanied by inane giggles and exaggerated eye-rolls. So where exactly did one of the supreme musical innovators go wrong? Let's have a look-see, shall we?

Excess, which actually features Alanis Morissette, tries very hard to reconcile Alanis' admittedly unique voice with Tricky's equally unique beats. Sounds like a good idea, but the final product is entirely mediocre. They seemed to have tried to hit the middle ground between their musics, but ended up expelling all that is singular about each of them. Even when Tricky takes on the vocals, the track is going far too fast for his voice to be effective, and Alanis' monotone chorus shows nothing of her ability for emotional discharge in song. A bad omen, indeed.

Evolution Revolution Love brings us back to the basics for a short while. The beginning has a nice, mooody, perhaps-slightly-over-produced, beat with Tricky's voice back to its usual tempo. However, Ed Kowalczyk's voice on the chorus does absolutely nothing for this track. One of the things that I like about Tricky's older stuff is that he wrote his music much like you are supposed to write a story. Every word, every phrase, every paragraph, should be essential, in some way, to the overall product. To me, neither Ed nor the totally unimpressive Hawkman add anything to this track. The track itself is fairly inoffensive - but certainly not the level of musicianship I expect from Tricky.

Over Me is an interesting idea. It consists of a reggae organ with a little off-beat d
rum banging away in the background. Hawkman, again, brings his mediocrity to this track along with someone called Ambersunshower, whose chorus is almost as convincing as Ed's on the last one. Once again, though, this song is very static - once you have heard the first 30 seconds of the song - you have it. Nothing more to find out here.

Girls is a song I had high hopes for, featuring Anthony Keidis and John Frusciante, of Red Hot Chilli Peppers fame. Unlike Excess' disappointment, though, this ends up sounding exactly like a Pepper's song instead of any sort of compromise between the styles. Don't get me wrong, I like the Chilli's, but if I want to hear them, I'll put on one of their albums - it's certainly not right for the mood I'm in when I listen to Tricky.

You Don't Wanna features good old Ambersunshower again, this time to a sort of Eurythmics beat gone senile. While her voice does sound considerably better here, this track sounds absolutely nothing like Tricky. It sounds more like Dr Dre's brand of production. It's catchy and funky, but there's not much artistic content. I know that there is a time and a place for Dr Dre, and that artists are allowed to change their style - but such a dramatic dumbing-down of his music is quite a shock to me. Maybe I just expect too much. That's what my wife says when I ask her to get that third breast, anyway.

#1 Da Woman, featuring, this time, Frusciante and Flea from the Chilli-camp, would be redundant to review again. Just read the Girls review and substitute appropriately, It should save us both some time.

Your Name, with Ambersunshower again, is like a bad ambient Orb track with vocals. Very chirpy, very plinky and very dull. I feel like I could listen to this song a thousand times and still not recognise it if I heard it on the radio. Possibly the most banal song Tricky has ever made.

Diss Never sees the return of Hawkman to
a more traditional Tricky-verse-score. But the bridge and the chorus seem doomed to anonymity amongst the great music of all time. Very manufactured and totally pointless. Its most redeeming factor is its status as one of the shortest songs on the album.

Bury The Evidence (how I wish I could) has Hawkman, thankfully, in the background. This is probably the strongest track on the album. A moody guitar backs up some angry lyrics from the Trick-meister, crescendoing to an interesting thrashy chorus. A fairly dark track ruined by the stark void of the rest of the album.

Something In The Way has Hawkman, mistakenly, trying to harmonise. He is a ragga artist by trade, I presume, and his singing voice is somewhat less than polished - thus bringing down an otherwise fairly acceptable backing track. I think Tricky needs some new mates.

Five Days, with the vocal "talents" of one Cyndi Lauper is, surprisingly, one of the very rare gems on this album. Finally - mission accomplished - a competent mix between the Princess of Pop and the Deviant of Dance. Cyndi's trademark squeal blends nicely with Tricky's clock-counting-down-like beat to produce a halfway decent little number. Is it worth the price of a CD though?

Give It To Em, with Hawkman again, is another of the nameless many on this album. A peurile beat backs up Hawkman gibbering on about gangster issues, namely shooting people and being hard. Not very scary, if you ask me.

A Song For Yukiko, once again, has an interesting concept that is totally let down by its implementation. A lounge-bar piano plonks out a couple of chords while a native drum beat potters along in the background. The lyrics are in Japanese, so they may well be very meaningful, but this track soon grows tiresome.

All in all a very poor effort from someone whose music has inspired me so many times. A reviewer in Spin magazine came up with a theory that this album is Tricky's real
isation that alternative music that is not easily accessible by the general public is not the way to make money. Perhaps this is just Tricky's pension fund and he will astound us yet again when he comes out with his next album. If he fails in this, however, I feel we must lament the passing of a true genius of his times.

Mind, it's just my opinion.

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