Published on Jun 16, 1998
Tricky has always been an angry artist. Luckily, that anger was
tempered with the other members of Massive Attack on their landmark
album,
Blue Lines. When the Tricky kid went solo, singer Martine
was able to add some human elements to make
Maxinquaye an absoultely beuatiful masterpiece in
trip-hop.
Tricky has always hated that term, though. So, in his last
album,
Pre-Millenium Tension, he eschweinged that label in favor of
dense, heavy b-boy beats, typical of west-cost American rappers. In
his new album,
Angels With Dirty Faces, Tricky not only further distances
himself with trip-hop, he adds heavy metal to his palatte. His
horizons have broadened, so give him props for that. But,
Angels With Dirty Faces is basically a misfire for a
musician whom we’ve come to expect brilliance from.
It’s easy for me to begin with the good elements of the album.
At least Scott Ian, from Anthrax, is employed. He adds his
pulverizing guitar work to many of the tracks in
Angels With Dirty Faces. P.J. Harvey also adds her majestic
voice to “Singing The Blues”, backed by an angelic choir.
The disturbing, claustrophobic beats are still very much there
throughout
Angels With Dirty Faces. The stacked, complex rhytms of “6
Minutes” and “Demise” will probably take dozens of listens to be
truely appreciated. Therefore, it’s hard to give this album a bad
grade right now, without giving it a few listens to seep in.
However…I stand by my grade as it is. So much of what made
Tricky great is not present on
Angels With Dirty Faces. What brought
Pre-Millenium Tension down was its incessant b-boy
posturing. Tricky is free to do whatever he wants, but he’s a
privlidged Brit who smokes spliffs the size of a zeppelin. His
bitching about record companies also thwarted that album’s power.
On
Angels With Dirty Faces, he elevates the attack even
further.
The record industry is “full of vomit”, on “6 minutes”. The
industry gets its own “fuck you” address on the song, “Record
Companies”. And in “Broken Homes”, P.J. Harvey is reduced to
bellowing, “Murder is Media”. Sure it is. But, haven’t we heard
this before in many other different phrases?
It also doesn’t help that Tricky’s trump card, Martine, is
reduced to a background vocal on so many of the tracks on
Angels With Dirty Faces. In many of the tracks, Martine is
reduced to a supporting role. On “Analyze Me,” she is given a
fairly chilly number to sing a dominant role in. None of the
lonely, longing numbers like “Makes Me Wanna Die” or “Suffocated
Love” appear on
Angels With Dirty Faces. Pity, those tracks made Tricky
stand out as a landmark artist.
The deaths of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac loom heavily on the
album. Most of the album addresses their death in some form or
another. And Tricky’s heart is in the right place. Though his vocal
delivery is still nowhere near as effective as Martine, when he
sings “I’m too scared to be a gun totting gangsta wannabe”, we
believe it.
Perhaps his breakup with Martine had something to do with the
slightly lower quality of
Angels With Dirty Faces. Martine’s role has been reduced
with each album that Tricky has made. With their classic,
Maxinquaye, Martine sounded like a vital second band member,
the equivliant to Keith Richards to Mick Jagger. In
Angels With Dirty Faces, she’s almost reduced to a guest
vocal spot.
Hopefully, Tricky will realize that Martine is the Cher to
Tricky’s Sonny Bono vocals. Ok, maybe he’s a better vocalist than
the late senator. But
Angels With Dirty Faces sounds like a side project to
Tricky’s previous great releases. Add this album to the growing
list of disappointing albums released by great artists this year,
right behind Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage. It’s still better than
most of the stuff that’s out today, but if this year was to end
right now, my top pic of the year, save Tori Amos’s
from the choirgirl hotel would be Dave Matthews Band’s new
album. That’s scarier than any of the fear-inducing tracks on
Angels With Dirty Faces.