I wrote a book recently, for Bloomsbury’s ‘33 1/ 3’ series, about Massive Attack’s 1991 debut, Blue Lines. Massive Attack, Mezzanine, 1998, record cover. Unlike earlier records, which relied heavily on samples and synthesizers, Mezzanine marked a foray into subtle instrumentation and lyrics evoking a claustrophobic urban miasma. The album opener, ‘Angel’, was used to harrowing effect in the film Snatch (2000) as itinerant boxer Mickey O’Neil’s (Brad Pitt) mother’s caravan was burned to the ground. It remains a shadowy noir built on meandering sitars, buzzsaw guitars, throbbing sub-bass and ethereal lyrics meant to create tension that builds like a fever. In the context of such sentimental fare, we are reminded, Mezzanine hit listeners like a ton of bricks. Simpler times, quainter times: these are all referenced in early frames of Massive Attack’s precision lighting and video programme – which Robert Del Naja made in close collaboration with British artist Adam Curtis – and in cheeky pre-show music that included anodyne gems such as Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ (1998) and Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’ (1997). 1998 was the high-water mark of a frothy neoliberal fantasy that seemed within reach. Also: the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, still caroused in the palaces of Baghdad US president Bill Clinton weathered impeachment and a young artist named Britney Spears released a song called ‘Baby One More Time’. New Labour and the guitar-strumming UK prime minister, Tony Blair, were riding high the Eurozone grew increasingly interlinked and millions logged on to a new-fangled service called AOL. Mezzanine was released in April of 1998, itself a year emblematic of an ebullient ’90s-era zeitgeist. Mezzanine XXI, as the tightly choreographed show was titled, marked the 21st anniversary of the eponymous record, which Massive Attack played in its entirety – albeit re-sequenced. And Guy Garvey, of the perpetually underrated Elbow, one-ups him: Typically a tenor, Garvey, aided by all kinds of creepy processing tricks, slathers “Flat of the Blade” with a barely tonal baritone, his otherworldly drawl holding the track together while stately horn samples ebb and fade.Massive Attack, the Bristol-based collective whose dubbed-out hip-hop permeated the culture of the 1990s, launched a European and US tour this year, which culminated last week at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Compositionally, it’s a promising song that derails at the five-minute mark, but Adebimpe certainly can’t be accused of phoning it in. Nonetheless, they do make some salutary choices in collaborators: TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe presides over the opening track and his magisterial monotone turns “Pray for Rain” into a slam-poet’s sermon. It’s a trick that works fairly well on first listen, but with each repetition it becomes clearer that the diversity in vocal performances in no way extends to the textures or rhythms that have always been the highlight of the best Massive Attack songs. On the majority of Heligoland, Massive Attack’s idea of heterogeneity is limited to rotating guest vocalists. Case in point is the closing track, “Atlas Air,” which realizes its epic aspirations only in its eight-minute runtime while indulging in overly orthodox Aphex-worship that sounds damn near anachronistic. It also reaches too readily into the bag of trademarked Massive Attack tricks, a sign that the band’s pioneering producers aren’t looking to stake out any new frontiers. Save one late-coming pair of songs, “Flat of the Blade” and the exquisite “Paradise Circus,” the album’s admirable consistency is belied by a lack of standout cuts. Though subtly crafted from start to finish, Heligoland makes no essential addition to the Massive Attack catalogue. Honestly, it’s like they never left, and that’s both the best and worst thing about the album. It’s been seven years since the last proper Massive Attack album, and those who missed the trip-hop titans should have no trouble sinking into Heligoland: Daddy G and 3D’s latest offers 10 tracks of the same eerie, art-house melodrama upon which the duo has built their rep.
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