Tricky - Maxinquaye
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Free Music Notes for Maxinquaye
Free Music Review: GREAT DEBUT; THIS IS THE TRICKY YOU WILL WANT.
Hit: 4 Stars
I HAVE MANY MAXIVE ATTACK AND PORTISHEAD CDS, I BOUGHT TWO TRICKY CDS; MAXINIQUE AND PRE-MILLINEUM. MAXINIQUE IS THE ONE TO HAVE. IT CONTINUES THE MELLOW THEME OF HIS PREVIOUS COLLABORATIONS. I'D STAY AWAY FROM PRE-MILLINEUM, IT'S DOES SOMETHING TO TRICKY'S VOICE THAT CAN START A HEADACHE...SOME OVER OR UNDER SYNTHESIZED NOISE. Free Music Review: Fascinating sound, but emotionally lacking.
Hit: 4 Stars
Listening to Maxinquaye, it's clear that Tricky had to break with Massive Attack. His vision was just too different. Maxinquaye is a dense, heavily textured album, more like a sound collage than a pop record. Massive Attack's albums, by contrast, have a clean and direct pop approach, especially Protection, which prompted Tricky's departure.
Maxinquaye feels "dirty," in the sense of something fertile and organic, fashioned from soil and resin. There are no clean distinctions between instruments. "Hell Is Round The Corner" pulses with weird, wafting samples of vocals and keyboards, glued to the lazy drums, like honey languidly dripping down the wall of a huge beehive. Tricky's bizarrely distorted, insect-like vocals complete the analogy. The percussion is recognizable as an instrument, but it has none of the clean thump of the drum machines used in typical electronica. The bone-dry rattle in "Ponderosa" doesn't quite sound like a live performance, but it doesn't sound like a machine either. It's like something the hive played by itself.
Of course, Tricky's style still owes a lot to Massive Attack. Like them, he varies his vocalists (there are four in all, including him). He doesn't even take the lead until the fourth track, and even when his voice is prominent, it usually shares the song equally with Martina Topley-Bird, the album's main voice. She's quite a find. Her voice expresses absolute detachment, occasionally tinged with resignation. Her performance in the cover of Public Enemy's "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos" surpasses Chuck D himself, and this despite the fact that her voice expresses no bluster or aggression, just hopeless urgency. She also finds a very peculiar vocal style for that song, a half-sung rap that follows a crazed dance rhythm. That one song might make the album worth the price. Elsewhere, she sings more conventionally, but generally refrains from excessive displays of emotion. Detachment is the order of the day here.
Also making an appearance is Allison Goldfrapp, before her solo career, but after her eye-catching turn on Orbital's Snivilisation. In "Pumpkin," she gives an extremely incoherent performance (much like on the Orbital album), drawing out the syllables in every word until it's impossible to tell what she's saying. But on this album, that's somehow fitting -- her voice sinks into the swampy ambient muck and becomes part of the dripping honey.
Despite the dense sound, the album surprisingly still has a lot of pop appeal. Most notably on "Aftermath," where the hook is created by a muted guitar tone, set to a dance beat, both undercut by ambient rumbling. There are no pop-style choruses, just recurring vocal lines, occasional sharp breaks in the rhythm, and a flute that strains from the blurry background. But the interplay between these elements is very memorable.
So, this is a fascinating and original album. But, even though Maxinquaye is denser, richer and probably more musically inventive than Protection, I still prefer Massive Attack's album. Sorry, Tricky. Massive Attack combine earthiness and sensuality with a kind of lonely romantic warmth. "Protection" encourages "you" to help a depressed friend, and suggests that they'll help you later when you need it. Tricky exchanges such quaint notions for decadence and dysfunction, which can also be depicted powerfully in music. But his persona does not make these topics compelling.
Sadly, Tricky is not much of a writer. All of his best lines on this album are recycled from his verses on "Karmacoma" and "Eurochild" from Protection. In addition to plagiarizing himself, he also lifts from "Ghosts" by Japan to fill out the end of "Aftermath." The original lines that he wrote for this album are much more simple both in rhythm and content.
Tricky doesn't make much of an impression as an MC either. Again this is because his non-recycled lines are simplistic, so there's not much room to show off. But Robert del Naja's rapping on Protection runs circles around Tricky's performances here. It was a wise decision to retreat into the shadows and let Martina handle most of the vocals. The one time where Tricky takes a shot at a full-blown rap song, on "Brand New You're Retro," he's strangely unconvincing. He engages in typical thug posturing, but he doesn't sound tough at all. He actually sounds more like an overly sensitive teenage boy lashing out impotently at people who are laughing at him.
Most importantly, Tricky is just not very charismatic. He sounded good in Massive Attack, as a darker counterpoint to Robert del Naja, but when he's by himself, he sounds like a sullen, uninteresting narcissist who uses his alleged inner torment as an excuse to be callous. When the time comes to bring all the different threads of the album together with some kind of unifying theme, the best he can come up with is, "They say I'm insane, but I'm more normal than most / Struggling so hard." And why is he struggling so hard? Because he's "exhausted with the mundane," which is how high school students justify cutting class. And then the self-aggrandizing rhetorical question: "Do you know what it's like to struggle? Have you ever had to struggle?" And so forth, on and on like this, repeating the word "struggling" over and over, all of this taking place in an unbearably long track appropriately called "Struggling." It's also the least musically interesting track on the album -- Tricky's mumbling is upfront, backed only by crashing drums and Martina's uncharacteristically hysterical vocalizing.
Because of this, the album leaves a mixed impression. One can't help but admire the unique sound, but in the end it feels somewhat hollow. Like a play that has elaborate and original set design, but mediocre dialogue. So it's worth a look, but it falls short of classic status.
Free Music Review: Glorious!
Hit: 4 Stars
I just picked up this disc after getting heavy into Massive Attack, and I must say, it really is incredible. Tricky seems to have taken everything I love about Massive Attack, and cranked the knobs up to 10. Dark, brooding, and paranoid to the limits, Maxinquaye really puts the "trip" into trip hop. I think Tricky has gotten his hands on some serious weed here, and I'm glad he has.
If you're into heavy beats and a desolate vibe, you will love the time you spend tripping with Tricky.
Free Music Review: I love my cd
Hit: 4 Stars
I am so glad I bought this CD. Tired of the top 40 crap that is played to death, I wanted something different and I definitely found it in Maxinquaye.
The music has a dark and sensual vibe to it. Trip hop is such an accurate description of Tricky's music. The vibe created here, takes you to a place where you can just chill and let the music carry you away.
I am a lousy reviewer, but this cd is amazing. If you love dark, moody and sensual music, this is definitely a purchase I recommend.
Free Music Review: One of Tricky's very best
Hit: 5 Stars
Maxinquaye is definitely a breakthrough album--perhaps the Nevermind of trip hop. What's amazing about this CD, especially in the context of so many others in Tricky's catalogue, is that while it is able to maintain the uncompromising creative feel that is ubiquitous of Tricky in his first few albums (basically continuing up to Angels With Dirty Faces), this album is also pretty easy to access for most listeners. Other CDs Tricky has released, while often equally creative and hypnotic, are much harder to grasp for most people. So Maxinquaye makes a wonderful way for someone who is interested to cut their teeth on Tricky's ideas before jumping into something much more esoteric like Nearly God. What's also nice is that this album tends to explore multiple musical perspectives with an equal command of each one, going from up-tempo beats to hazy grooves fluidly.
Those looking for Portishead need not apply. Tricky's music, even Maxinquaye, is by default a bit more challenging than that of his contemporaries. But perhaps that's why it is so enjoyable: between his raspy vocal stylings and Martina Topley-Bird's gorgeous singing, wrapped in all of the dark grooves and sexy beats, is something magical that time cannot remove. If you're looking for something to inspire you and give you a truly intelligent interaction with your music, this is where it's at.